Chronic Stress and Obesity: Psychology, Nutrition and Modern Lifestyle Behavior

Dear Colleagues,

Today’s society and lifestyles greatly affect human well-being. Chronic psychological stress is an integral part of our lives and has an adverse effect on our health. The mechanism linking psychological stress and chronic disease is closely related to our food choices and habits, leading to obesity. Furthermore, the relationship between psychological stress and excessive weight gain is multi-dimensional. Long-term stress can interact with genetic predisposition and affect the neuroendocrine response of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), epigenetic modulation and the gut microbiome environment to promote obesity. Chronic psychological stress also influences overall food intake. Chronic stress has been shown to be related the consumption of high amounts of refined sugars and saturated fatty acids, called “comfort food”. In the short term, this food helps decrease the emotional stress response; however, this increased intake of energy-dense foods leads to excessive weight gain, which is enhanced by biological responses to stressors. Excessive body weight has become a major public health concern in high-income countries. The number of deaths and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) attributable to overweight and obesity doubled globally between 1990 and 2017. The risk factors of obesity are well known and include lifestyle behaviors such as physical activity, nutrition, alcohol drinking and sleep quality. Less understood is the interaction between these behaviors and chronic stress in obesity development.

This Special Issue aims to provide insight into the latest evidence of a relationship between chronic stress and obesity and the role of lifestyle in this bidirectional interaction.

Research articles and comprehensive reviews (not including systematic reviews) with a suggested minimum word count of 4000 words are invited. Papers prepared by multidisciplinary teams connecting various fields of science (e.g., psychology, sociology, nutrition, genetics, biochemistry and medicine) will be highly welcomed.

Therefore, we invite authors to submit manuscripts that address the connection between the psychological and nutritional effects of modern lifestyle behaviors.

Dr. Joanna Rog
Prof. Dr. Napoleon Waszkiewicz
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Medicina is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• obesity
• psychological stress
• lifestyle behaviors
• physical activity
• quality of sleep
• diet
• nutrition
• stress-reducing methods
• yoga
• meditation
• wellbeing
• lifestyle medicine