14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers at Erasmus MC, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, led by assistant professor and pediatric endocrinologist Erica van den Akker, determined in a new study that children with more body weight than their peers also tend to exhibit higher levels of stress hormones, including cortisol.
The correlation became increasingly strong as the severity of childhood obesity increased, the team reported in the latest issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. This is the first study to demonstrate elevated stress markers in overweight and obese kids, PsychCentral reports.
Buildups of cortisol and other stress hormones can have long-term negative impacts on human health, and should be avoided at all costs. Countless stress-relieving programs are aimed at adults, but none specifically at children, which puts this subgroup of the population at more risk of medical issues.
“We were surprised to find obese children, as young as age 8, already had elevated cortisol levels. By analyzing children’s scalp hair, we were able to confirm high cortisol levels persisted over time,” van den Akker explains. She adds that more studies are needed to determine whether or not the young human body has different mechanisms for coping with elevated stress than the adult one.