DodoFinance Breaking News Made For You!
About the episode
The climate crisis, wars, diseases, injustice and corruption: the news is full of them. And even though we often watch or listen to it from the safety of our living room and aren’t always a part of it ourselves, it can still cause a lot of stress.
A researcher explains in BBC Science Focus: even if it is only about images, our body can react as if we were ourselves in a stressful situation. Our fight or flight response activates, our nervous system, our immune system and our metabolism react. Our heart beats faster, our hands sweat, and cortisol primes our body for action.
Nou is een beetje ongemakkelijkheid bij het kijken van zware nieuwsverhalen wellicht de prijs die je betaalt om een goedgeïnformeerde burger te zijn, maar is het een continue stress en krijg je te veel negatief nieuws binnen, dan kan dat zowel je lichamelijke gesteldheid als je leventieftelling influence.
What is the best thing to do about it, according to this researcher? Take the news in small amounts, leave a big break in between, compensate by also looking for positive messages or doing something that makes you happy and relaxed.
Oh, and she gave another piece of advice: don’t combine watching the news with eating. Stress within two hours of a meal would cause your body to process food in such a way that you can add about 104 calories. Not bad once, every day, well, not only will you feel the stress, she says, but you will see it too.
Learn more about working from here neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett.
“Food expert. Unapologetic bacon maven. Beer enthusiast. Pop cultureaholic. General travel scholar. Total internet buff.”
