Dietary stress may compromise bones
By Janet Raloff
People who mentally wrestle about what and how much to eat produce elevated amounts of the hormone cortisol, a biomarker of stress, a new study finds.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver had observed that women who willfully regulate food intake sometimes develop subtle perturbations in their menstrual cycles. Since cortisol is known to affect menstrual cycles, the scientists monitored levels of the hormone in urine of 62 woman. Half of the women had scored high on tests of their propensity to restrain dietary intake; the other half scored low.