When something terrifying happens or tragedy strikes, it can affect your whole body, including your digestive system. Stress can quickly use up important nutrients, which is why you might feel exhausted and lacking energy after a mass violence event.
In an emergency situation, your body immediately reacts to ensure your survival. It does this by shutting down certain parts of the body while activating others. Your breathing, heart rate, and muscles go into overdrive. However, digestion usually slows down during the crisis and may speed up afterwards, which can cause either constipation or loose bowels. To provide quick energy, your liver releases a type of sugar called glucose. Once the emergency is over, you may not feel like eating right away, but later on, you might start craving carbohydrates to replace the sugar that was used up.
When you’re under high levels of stress, it can change your eating habits and preferences. You might not feel like cooking as much as you did before. Feeling tired can also lead you to eat whatever is convenient rather than have a balanced meal. Your appetite might change as well. It’s common to turn to sweet, salty, or fried snack foods that are easy to get when you’re stressed. However, it’s more important than ever to eat nutritious food during stressful times. Whenever possible, try to choose a variety of fruits, vegetables, and grains, along with sources of protein and healthy fats. This will help give your body the nourishment it needs to cope with the challenges you face.
Here is a link to recommendations for healthy eating.
What you eat is important to your recovery, not just your physical health, but for your mental health as well.
Eating well helps your body recover from stress.
Do you eat to feel better? Although some people eat less in the face of strong emotions, if you're in emotional distress you might turn to impulsive choices, quickly eating whatever's convenient. Many people tend to seek high-calorie, high-fat foods during periods of stress. Some skip a meal due to stress and then eat too much when they are really hungry. Comfort foods seem like a natural way to soothe negative emotions, such as anger, fear, boredom, sadness and loneliness. In the long run, however, it is important to process the difficult feelings and maintain a healthy eating pattern.
The good news is that if you're prone to emotional eating, you can take steps to get back on track with healthy eating habits. You can begin to see if emotional eating happens with you and then find more satisfying ways to soothe your feelings.
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Write down what you eat, how much you eat, when you eat, how you're feeling when you eat and how hungry you are. Look for patterns that reveal any connection between mood and food.
When you are stressed, do you choose snack foods? Eat too fast? If stress contributes to your emotional eating, try a stress management technique, such as yoga, meditation or deep breathing.
Link to Muscle Relaxation and Breathe to Relax
Is your hunger physical or emotional? If you ate just a few hours ago and don't have a rumbling stomach, you're probably not hungry. Give the craving time to pass.
Talk to a friend or family member if you want to eat even though you are not hungry.
Instead of snacking when you're not really hungry, distract yourself and substitute a healthier behavior. Take a walk, watch a movie, play with your cat, listen to music, read, surf the internet or call a friend.
Restrictive eating may increase your food cravings, especially in response to emotions. Eat satisfying amounts of healthier foods, enjoy an occasional treat and get plenty of variety to help curb cravings.
If you feel the urge to eat between meals, choose a healthy snack, such as fresh fruit, vegetables with low-fat dip, nuts or unbuttered popcorn. Try a small portion of your favorite foods to see if that satisfies your craving.
Mindless eating is when someone eats without paying attention to or enjoying what they are consuming. An example is eating an entire container of ice cream while watching television. Instead, take a moment to pause, slow down and eat mindfully. Really taste the food and enjoy each bite.
Some people experience mood swings related to the amount of sugar in their food. If you think that is true for you, look for places that sugar hides in your daily diet. Slowly cut back. Check labels for sugar content. You might be surprised. As you cut back, your taste buds will adjust, and you won’t need as much sugar to feel satisfied.
Everyone has different nutritional needs and eating patterns, based on their specific health concerns and cultural heritage. Here are some general ways to support your nervous system and overall health. A strong body supports a confident mind.
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Maintain your energy throughout the day rather than skip meals. Smaller meals can help satisfy your appetite, stabilize blood sugar levels and provide nutrients during the day.
Your body needs the essential amino acids or building blocks found in protein that help regulate brain function and mood. Amino acids help produce serotonin, a chemical compound that helps regulate sleep and mood. Protein also stabilizes blood sugar to avoid sugar spikes and crashes.
Grains, fruits, and vegetables supply you with essential nutrients that protect your body from the harmful effects of stress. Especially good are dark chocolate, nuts, berries, green leafy vegetables, carrots, or potatoes.
Healthy fats such as olive oil, nuts, seeds, avocados, and fish oils support brain activity and health and can increase your mood and energy. Animal-based fats such as butter are naturally nutrient-rich, and are associated with foods that contain good protein.
In the aftermath of extreme stress, the body can become more sensitive to the effects of adrenaline, the hormone that is part of the stress response. Feeling jittery or jumpy is one sign of this increased sensitivity. Caffeine tends to increase the effects of adrenaline. While moderate amounts of caffeine increase alertness and is well tolerated by many people, others are quite sensitive to the effects of caffeine. People with high stress and anxiety or panic symptoms may find that caffeine makes them feel jittery, irritable and more anxious. If you are already stressed, caffeine can make your reactions stronger.
Water is invaluable to your overall health. Stress can cause dehydration and dehydration can cause additional stress on your body. During times of stress, you may forget to get enough fluids to keep you at your best. Every cell of our body needs water to carry nutrients and energy to them and to carry away toxins.
The body’s response to stress quickly uses up nutrients and important vitamins and minerals essential to good health. Stress can also change how your digestive system absorbs nutrients. This is why good nutrition helps you recover. A good multi-vitamin can help balance any losses.
When the body senses signals of distress—both emotional and physical—it releases cortisol, a stress hormone, to help the body respond to threat. The body prepares itself by ensuring that enough sugar or energy is readily available. Insulin levels fall, adrenaline levels rise, and more glucose is released from the liver. Unfortunately, some stress reactions can continue off and on for weeks or months, activating sugar highs and lows.
Glucose, a type of sugar, is your body’s main energy source and is essential for body health, providing the energy we need for everyday activity and for brain function. Many foods, such as bread, pasta, fruit and vegetables, are changed into glucose during digestion as part of normal function. They also have many essential nutrients. Refined sugar has less nutritional value. Although the human body needs sugars, it also needs the amount of glucose to remain at a consistent level. When the body has more sugar than it needs, it rapidly produces insulin in an attempt to keep the levels consistent. This causes blood glucose to decrease, which results in a sudden drop in energy levels, or a sugar crash. The spike can feel like a burst of energy. The crash can make a person feel shaky, tired, moody, irritable and can affect concentration. So it is important to keep sugars in balance with a mix of protein, fiber, carbohydrates and fat.
Sugar is often put in prepared food such drinks, ketchup and barbeque sauce, soups and sandwiches. Sugar is often hidden in foods we don’t think of as sugary. Foods labeled as natural, healthy and “low fat” often have high amounts of sugar.
If you’re going to eat sugary foods, such as ice cream, cake or other desserts, eat them with or after other meals. Make sure to eat some protein that helps to balance out blood glucose levels.
Visit the US Department of Agriculture for up-to-date information on healthy eating.
Download the Start Simple with MyPlate app to pick simple daily food goals, see real-time progress, and earn badges along the way. This easy-to-use app can help you make positive changes.