(P28-035-23) Higher Morning Cortisol Is Associated With Lower Intuitive Eating in Midlife Women

Objectives: To examine the association between measures of salivary cortisol at five different time points during the day (waking, 30-,45-, and 60-minutes after waking, and prior to bed) and intuitive eating in a cohort of midlife women.

Methods: Data was analyzed from a cross-sectional study of women (40-64 years; n=106), conducted April 2017 to July 2019. Participants completed the Intuitive Eating Scale (IES) and its three subscales 1) unconditional permission to eat (UPE); 2) eating for physical rather than emotional reasons (EPR); and 3) reliance on internal hunger and satiety cues (RHSC). They also provided ten salivary cortisol samples over two days, collected upon waking, 30-, 45-, and 60-minutes after waking, and prior to bed. To assess the overall cortisol exposure from waking to 60 minutes after waking, the cortisol area under the curve with respect to ground (AUC_g) was calculated. Both unadjusted and age-adjusted linear regression models were used to determine associations between AUC_g and intuitive eating and between cortisol at each time point and intuitive eating.

Results: In age-adjusted analyses, higher cortisol at waking was associated with lower EPR subscale scores (β = - 0.43, 95% CI: -0.88, -0.01, p = 0.05) but not with IES, UPE, or RHSC. Higher cortisol at 30 minutes after waking was associated with lower mean IES (β = - 0.30, 95% CI: -0.57, -0.03, p < 0.05) and EPR subscale scores (β = - 0.62, 95% CI: -1.05, -0.19, p < 0.01) but was not associated with UPE or RHSC in age-adjusted analyses. Cortisol at other time points was not associated with mean IES scores or subscales. Higher AUC_g was associated with lower IES scores (β = - 0.01, 95% CI: -0.01, -0.0001, p < 0.05) and lower EPR scores (β = - 0.01, 95% CI: -0.02, -0.002, p = 0.01) but not with UPE or RHSC in adjusted analyses.

Conclusions: These results suggest that higher morning cortisol in midlife women is associated with lower IE, specifically lower scores on the eating for physical rather than emotional reasons subscale and are consistent with other studies suggesting a relationship between cortisol and emotional eating. Future research should explore these findings using longitudinal study designs to determine temporality.

Funding Sources: Supported by funds from the College of Health Sciences at the University of Rhode Island.