Overeating And Stress

By Author: Steven Johnson
Total Articles: 494
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One of the increasingly sad cliches of rom-coms is the scene where the heroine comes home depressed after another day of being victimized at work and by her boyfriend. She trails sadness into the kitchen and, with a heavy sigh, pulls out a big tub of ice-cream from the refrigerator. She knows this will be adding unwanted pounds to the waistline, but the need for comfort food is greater than her vanity at this moment in time. Now with a tub and a generous spoon in hand, she arms herself with a box of tissues and loads up the recording of her favorite romantic drama. Now she can cry into the ice-cream to thaw it out and mourn the day she was born.

Although this is intended as a joke, albeit in somewhat bad taste (pun intended), there's an underlying truth. Too many people respond to stress by eating. Looking at the wreckage in the economy after the recession, there's a pervasive fear of unemployment. With no job or only a minimum-wage job, keeping a home together grows ever more difficult. In such circumstances, taking to the bottle is the expensive solution. Food in our society has become very cheap in real terms. Most ...
... of the cheapest food may be junk, but it's so stuffed with sugar and salt that it tastes good and makes us feel better. There's just one problem. Once you get into the habit of overeating junk food, heartburn will soon be making your life a misery. Be thankful. If you'd chosen alcohol, every morning would be the misery of a hangover with liver damage waiting for you down the line. At least food gives you almost immediate warnings of the pain to come.

As you stuff food down, there comes that moment when you can almost feel the problem starting. You suddenly feel uncomfortably full. Experience tells you your stomach acid is bubbling upwards. A few minutes later, the pain kicks in and you feel nauseous. Sleep is going to be disrupted again. Tomorrow morning, you're going to feel as bad as if you'd drowned your troubled in beer or something stronger. It was never like this when you were younger. In those trouble-free days, you could eat pizza and drink beer without any problems. Now that your body's slowing down, overeating comes with a big price tag.

So here comes the big decision. You could lay in supplies of Nexium, or you could make lifestyle changes. This should be a no-brainer. The best results come when you cut down on alcohol, quit smoking, stop eating supersized portions, switch to healthy food, and introduce a little exercise into your life. The result will be an immediate improvement in your general health. Most find their mood improves. Even more importantly, the heartburn goes away! This takes nothing away from Nexium. As a proton pump inhibitor, it's one of the best and it will also make the heartburn go away. But why should you want to make yourself ill only to pay for the drug to make you better. Surely it's better to break this vicious cycle and reduce the food intake no matter how much stress you feel.