Non-overweight women who are vulnerable to the effects of stress are more likely to have excess abdominal fat, and have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, a study conducted at Yale suggests. While past studies have examined cortisol response in overweight women, this is the first study to show that lean women with abdominal fat have exaggerated responses to cortisol.
Abdominal fat is related to worse health, including greater risk of heart disease and diabetes.
Greater exposure to life stress or psychological vulnerability to stress may explain their enhanced cortisol reactivity. In turn, their cortisol exposure may have led them to accumulate greater abdominal fat. Cortisol affects fat distribution by causing fat to be stored centrally-around the organs. People with diseases associated with extreme exposure to cortisol, such as severe recurrent depression and Cushing's disease also have excessive amounts of visceral fat. We predicted that reacting to the same stressors consistently by secreting cortisol would be related to greater visceral fat.