Table 1.

Ten takeaway messages: obesity and mental stress. Shown are takeaway messages regarding obesity and mental stress.

1.	Shorter-term “fight or flight” stress response increases sympathomimetic activity [4].
2.	Shorter-term adrenergic stress responses may improve cognition and physiologic function, as well as alter tolerance to pain and immune function [4].
3.	Longer-term “submit and stay” stress may increase hypothalamic corticotropic activity and worsen sleep patterns [4,51].
4.	Longer-term hypothalamic stress responses may increase food cravings, promote pain intolerance, increase blood pressure, worsen glucose metabolism, and dysregulate immune responses [4,[51], [52], [53]].
5.	Chronic stress-induced adiposopathic responses may adversely affect the limbic system [4,51], which is responsible for behavior and emotional responses.
6.	Dysregulation of the limbic system with chronic stress may affect hunger, food choice, and emotional modulation of food intake [4].
7.	Dysregulation of the limbic system with chronic stress may affect reward-seeking behavior [4].
8.	Mental stress may adversely affect the cerebrum, which may contribute to prioritization of personal, work, or other behaviors and activities, with less prioritization of healthful behaviors and activities (i.e., healthful nutrition and routine physical activity) [2,4,54].
9.	Mental stress may impair self-regulation and promote choosing unhealthful (immediately rewarding ultra-processed) foods over more healthful (delayed-gratification unprocessed) foods [2,4,54].
10.	Obesity and its adverse health complications may increase mental stress, which may contribute to unhealthful behavior, endocrinopathies and immunopathies, which, in turn, may further worsen obesity and its complications, resulting in an adiposopathic stress cycle [4,52,55] (See Fig. 10).