Comfort food might not be as healing as it seems.
If you’re feeling down, stressed or heartbroken, it’s all too tempting to go for food that makes you feel happier — but it could also be bad for your health in the long run.
A new study published in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology found that emotional eating — eating in response to sadness or stress rather than hunger — was associated with heart health issues.
Over the course of 13 years, researchers from the University Hospital of Nancy in France studied 1,109 participants who were tested on whether they were emotional eaters.
Any cardiovascular damage in the participants was recorded, including carotid-femoral pulse-wave velocity, stiffness in the arteries, and diastolic dysfunction, stiffness in the heart.
The study found that emotional eating was associated with stiffer arteries, which is linked to high risks of heart disease and stroke.
Emotional eating also led to a 38% increased risk of a stiffer heart, which is linked to a greater risk of developing heart failure — with 31.9% of the association being due to stress levels.
“Stress might be one of the reasons for eating in response to feelings instead of hunger,” lead author Dr. Sandra Wagner, a nutritional epidemiologist at the CIC-P, said in a statement. “We know that emotional eaters are less aware of hunger and satiety but mindful eating brings attention to these physical sensations.”
While it may seem that the cardiovascular issues from emotional eating would stem from people reaching for high-calorie foods, this was not the case, according to Professor Nicolas Girerd, an author of the study.
“One explanation is that we measured average calorie intake and emotional eaters may binge when stressed and then eat less at other times,” Girerd said. “This yo-yo pattern may have negative effects on the heart and blood vessels compared with stable food intake.”
The study suggests that the “reward system” might play a role in emotional eating as it seems to diminish feelings of stress.
There are a few ways to kick an emotional eating habit and save your heart health. Girerd suggests mindful eating.
“[Mindful eating] means taking time out to eat, either alone or with others, being in the moment and aware of what you are doing, and not being distracted by your phone or the TV,” he explained.
Going for a walk or doing any kind of physical activity can also help avoid emotional eating since it reduces stress and also acts as a replacement and distraction.
“Just 10 minutes a day of meditation or breathing exercises can also help to recenter and reduce stress,” Wagner said. “To sum up, use the three Ms to kick the habit of emotional eating: move, meditate and mindful eating.”
“Techniques to tackle emotional eating are already used to help obese individuals. Our study suggests that these strategies should be extended to all emotional eaters, regardless of weight, to stop cardiovascular damage later in life,” Wagner added.