Change in diet doesn?t lower stress: Study

The research was conducted by a team on a mouse model that was placed in stressful enviornments.

If you thought that trying out a new diet can lower stress, then you better think again. A new research has found that improving your diet doesn’t make any difference to stress levels.

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The research was conducted by a team from Imperial College London and the Nestle Research Centre on a mouse model placed in stressful environments. It has founded that improving diet of the rodents did not normalise their metabolic profile, an indicator of their health.

The researchers divided 36 rats into groups of six. Groups A to D were fed a standard diet, while groups E and F were fed a diet enriched with long chain polyunsaturated acids which are normally found in milk and dairy products.

The rats were then subjected to different types of stress. Following the tests, samples of blood plasma were taken from the rats and analysed using NMR spectroscopy.

They found the stress caused by maternal separation led to a decrease in lipoproteins and an increase in amino acids, glucose, lactate, creatine and citrate. The stress caused by the water avoidance resulted in increased levels of O-acetyl glycoproteins.

"Although the study shows this particular dietary intervention did not work to significantly improve health, the importance of a good diet in remaining healthy should not be underestimated," she said.

"However this work could have important implications for the development of other dietary interventions. The research shows it is possible to accurately measure and quantify how changing diet impacts health. This could ultimately lead to the development of more targeted and more effective products," she added.

The research is published online in the Journal of Proteome Research.