When we encounter a stressful situation our body's protective response is to produce stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, to speed up the heart rate and send blood to the muscles to galvanise the body. If this response prolongs, our body is pushing blood to the muscles and not to the immune, digestive and reproductive systems. Therefore prolonged reaction to stress can lead to the dysfunction of these systems.

So managing our stress levels in midlife, is one of the adjustments we need to be aware of to improve our health.

Hormonal weight gain can be caused by chronic stress. Oestrogen can be produced by fat cells however if chronic stress has created ongoing adrenaline production, the adrenals can't produce enough oestrogen to balance, so they start to store food as abdominal fat.