Which is worse, stress or insomnia?

So far, most of us know the connection between stress and eating. In difficult times, most of us eat cookies.

Journal of Appliced Psychology has published a study that says the worst enemy of your diet except stress is your TV viewing habit all night long. In two studies of more than 200 workers in China, researchers found that the true difference in healthier diets is sleep.

“We found that employees who have a stressful day of work tend to bring their negative feelings to the workplace and to the dining table by eating more than usual and eating more fast food than healthy Mahcox1> food, said study co-author Chu-Hsiang “Dasy” Chang, professor of psychology at MSU.

“Well, another study found out how sleep helped people cope with their stressful eating after work”, it continued. When employees slept best the night before, they tended to eat better when they experienced stress the next day”.

In two studies of high - stress workers, researchers found that when employees are in poor moods, they eat to compensate for it. Speaking to MSU Today, Yihao Liu, co-author of the study and assistant at the University of Illinois, explained that eating is “an activity to free and regulate someone's bad mood because individuals instinctively avoid feelings and approach eating wishes”, he said.

But for long-term relief, Chang and Liu found that the best way to avoid negative feelings and eating is to lower that package of chips and sleep.

The good nighttime “may cause employees to feel energetic again, which enables them to cope with stress at work the next day and less vulnerable to unhealthy eating”, Chang explained.

So is sleeping better than a box of doughnuts for establishing a moral state? It turns out so.

“Food-related benefits can serve as the temporary access drug for stressed employees”, Chang said, “and failure to address the sources of stress at work can have long-term devastating effects on the health of employees”.