Pollution and toxins in our air, water and food rightly receive the blame for many ills. One common toxic element in particular can cause you to put on weight around your middle.
The blame for a midriff bulge, say researchers in Sweden, may be the noise that surrounds you.
In a 15-year study, the researchers found that when you are besieged by the sounds of cars, trucks, buses, trains, airplanes and other common noise sources, your chances of developing a substantial belly bulge increases substantially.
The scientists found that living under the noisy flight path of jet planes taking off and landing at an airport was the most influential culprit. In addition, when you are continually exposed to several sources of noise – say a busy highway and a nearby airport at the same time – your risk for a bigger belly swells significantly.
As you get older, your risk also grows. Significant belly expansion was mainly found among people over the age of 60.
Why does your body respond to noise by building a bigger midriff? The researchers point to the stress hormone called cortisol. When you’re stressed by noise, the body produces more cortisol. The cortisol, in turn, stimulates the deposit of fat tissue around your middle.
Cutting back on noise is one of the reasons I’ve switched over to manual lawn and gardening tools this summer. On a summer weekend afternoon, my suburban neighborhood is filled with the rumble of gas-powered mowers and leaf blowers. We also have jet planes flying fairly low overhead as they go in and out of a local airport.
So it’s a quiet relief to me when I get out my practically silent rotary mower and start trimming the grass and weeds. It’s very relaxing, which fights cortisol.
You can also battle cortisol using DHEA. It’s the hormone we release after a stressful event that helps us calm down. Dr. Michael Cutler tells me that DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) can often be low in today’s world, thereby contributing to abnormal belly fat.
On top of that, excess cortisol drains your DHEA even faster than normal and wears you out. Fortunately, DHEA is very easy to get as a supplement at a health food store or from an online source, and you only need 10mg a day to start lowering cortisol and fighting belly bulge.
