Stress is a full body experience, deeply connected to your perception of a situation, to your thoughts and feelings. It can be beneficial in some contexts and detrimental in others, especially when you keep experiencing it chronically. According to endocrinologist and stress research expert prof. dr. Liesbeth van Rossum (Erasmus MC), chronic stress causes one of the world’s leading health problems: obesity. Liesbeth aims to dive deeper into all the factors that make up a person’s health to better understand why someone may become obese. Tackling obesity requires more than “move more, eat less”. Being sensitive to the multifactorial nature of obesity can lead to better personalized treatment and can help reduce the stigma around it. Of course, a healthy lifestyle is the foundation, but we also need changes at the societal level to prevent the development of obesity. We need healthy food to be cheaper, a work environment that reduces instead of creates stress, and easier access to help when needed.

Stress is complex and multifaceted and we all experience it in our daily lives. In this podcast we talk to various experts about stress. We talk about the latest developments in stress research and approach stress from various angles: physiology, emotion, cognition, behaviour and context. Stress Navigation is part of the 10-year research project Stress in Action. Marcos Ross is a PhD candidate at Amsterdam UMC and interviews our guests in the English episodes.