Daily habits such as eating breakfast, sleeping and exercising are associated with the psychological flexibility people draw on to handle stress, according to a new study. Because the findings are based on correlations drawn from a survey, they do not establish that such habits create that flexibility.
A research team at Binghamton University, State University of New York, surveyed 401 college students about their eating habits, sleep, exercise and alcohol consumption. The aim was to analyze how lifestyle habits relate to psychological flexibility and resilience. Women made up 58% of the participants. The results appeared in the latest issue of the Journal of American College Health.
Psychological flexibility refers to the ability to move toward one's values and goals even amid difficult thoughts and emotions. Resilience refers to the capacity to recover from stress and adversity. Lina Begdache, an associate professor of health and wellness studies who led the study, said some people do not avoid stress but instead change the way they view a situation and mobilize the brain's resources to respond. Begdache described this as a process of stepping back and identifying for oneself what gave rise to an emotion.
Students who ate breakfast five or more times a week scored higher on resilience, an effect the researchers attributed to psychological flexibility. Students who slept less than six hours a day tended to score lower on both resilience and psychological flexibility. Exercise was associated with psychological flexibility and resilience even at 20 minutes or more, and taking fish oil, or omega-3, several times a week was also linked to psychological flexibility.
The study identified psychological flexibility as a pathway through which diet and lifestyle habits act on resilience. The interpretation has limits, however. Begdache said people who are already resilient may be more likely to sleep well, eat breakfast and exercise in the first place.
That means the survey alone cannot determine whether the habits are a cause or a result. The analysis also found that women tended to score lower on psychological flexibility and resilience. Because the participants were limited to college students, the findings are difficult to apply directly to other age groups.