Effects of acute shock on body weight are mediated by changes in food intake

Abstract

Weexamined the causal role of decreased food intake in the body weight pattern observed after exposure to intermittent footshock. In Experiment 1, relative to controls, shocked animals decreased food intake and lost weight in the 24-h test. An unshocked group whose food intake was yoked to the shocked group (food-yoked group) for the poststress period revealed that food intake was a sufficient cause of the body weight loss. In Experiment 2, after the first 24 h, the shock group recovered food intake and body weight gain but did not compensate for the initial losses. Body weights of food-yoked animals again indicated that food intake was a sufficient cause of these effects. The lowered body weight of shocked animals at the end of testing was due to a transient hypoingestion and a failure to subsequently show a compensatory hyperingestion. Dess's (1991) regulatory shift hypothesis is refined in the light of these findings, .Stressors, such as electric shock, immobilization, noise, and crowding, that decrease body weight or body weight gain in rats are also capable of inducing anorexia (Alario,

"The Behavioral Effects of Environmental Enrichment in Rats"

“…Stress can temporarily increase or decrease food intake. For example, electric shock and restraint decrease food consumption (Rickards, Job, & Boakes, 1997;Marti, Marti, & Armario, 1994;Zylan & Brown, 1996); exposure to repeated cold stress increases feeding (Kawanishi, Fukuda, Tamura, Nishijo, & Ono,1997); noise stressors increase (Rasbury & Shemberg, 1971;Wilson & Cantor, 1986) and decrease feeding (Krebs, Macht, Weyers, Weijers, & Janke, 1996). Pijlman, Wolterink, & Van Ree (2003) suggest that stress may influence the sensitivity of subjects to rewarding stimuli.…”

Effects of Recurrent Stress and a Music Intervention on Tumor Progression and Indices of Distress in an MNU-induced Mammary Cancer in Rats

“…The animal literature also supports that stress affects feeding behaviors. For example, rats crowded, experiencing changes in housing environments, exposed to electric shock, and exposed to restraint stress decrease food consumption (Brown & Grunberg, 1995;O'Connor & Eikelboom, 2000;Rickards, Job, & Boakes, 1997;Marti, Marti, & Armario, 1994;Zylan & Brown, 1996). In contrast, exposure to repeated cold stress as well as noise stressors increase food consumption (Kawanishi, Fukuda, Tamura, Nishijo, & Ono, 1997;Krebs, Macht, Weyers, Weyers, & Jankers, 1996).…”

Effect of early nutritional experience on the feeding behaviour of adult female rats

“…Extensive experimental data related to stressful or aversive influences on food consumption demonstrated that tail pinch (Greeno and Wing, 1994), repeated cold stress (Kawanishi et al, 1997;Schultz et al, 1999) subsequently promote feeding while electrical shocks (Rickards et al, 1997), chronic noise (Alario et al, 1987) and restraint (Grignaschi et al, 1993;Zylan and Brown, 1996) decreased food intake in rodents. In addition to these influences the social and environmental factors and their complicated interactions also appear to be important in the mechanism of the onset of eating disorders.…”