The Silent Stressor Quietly Driving Modern Stress and Disease

Tranquility Foods
Aug 18
5 min read

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Imagine your kitchen at breakfast: cereal, low-fat milk, yogurt, smoothies, and toaster waffles. The packaging is familiar—fortified, enriched, better-for-you. This is the invisible logic of modern nutrition, one that most of us rarely question.

Yet woven into this nutritional safety net is a little-noticed chemical: synthetic vitamin A, most often as vitamin A palmitate or retinyl acetate.

It appears in nearly all low-fat and skim milk products, non-dairy alternatives, and mass-market yogurts.
It’s common in cereals, snack bars, processed cheese, baby formula, and even pet food.
It’s packed into meal shakes, margarine, and a dizzying array of packaged foods branded as supportive of good health.

Fortification was introduced as a public health measure. But today, synthetic vitamin A’s omnipresence means most people ingest small doses daily, often for years, without ever realizing it.

Sensory Receptors: The Body’s Stress Alarms

Understanding what this means requires a look at our biology, specifically, two lesser-known but powerful sensory receptors: TRPV1 and TRPA1.

TRPV1 is most famously activated by heat and capsaicin, the compound that makes chili peppers burn. It’s found in nerves, the brain, and many organs, acting as a “stress response protein” in the central nervous system.
TRPA1 responds to irritants like smoke, onions, and environmental chemicals, and is found on pain-detecting neurons throughout the body.

These receptors are meant to help us survive, sounding the body’s alarm when injury, illness, or threat is present. Normally, such activation is brief—a signal for healing and repair, then they switch off. But with daily, repeated stimulation—such as from synthetic vitamin A—this system can get stuck on “high alert.”

Recent studies confirm that retinoids, such as synthetic vitamin A, can activate these channels. Chronic activation influences everything from nerve pain to inflammation, energy metabolism, and even cognitive performance.

Chronic Activation and Everyday Stress

What happens when the alarm never shuts off? Daily stress isn’t just about looming deadlines or parenting struggles—it’s chronic, physiological, and often invisible. The typical modern day brings not only mental challenges, but a background hum of nervous system excitement that we’ve come to see as normal.

Here’s how it often looks:

Anxiety crops up without obvious cause, lingering nervousness, and constant anticipation of “what’s next.”
Restlessness fuels multitasking, impatience, inability to relax after work, and growing difficulty falling or staying asleep.
Migraines and headaches resist conventional treatments and are increasingly tied to TRPA1/TRPV1 activity.
Children and teens: more cases of ADHD, fidgeting, trouble focusing, emotional swings, and “wired and tired” behavior—a nervous system that can’t power down.
Mood swings, irritability, and social friction at home and at work. Small disagreements escalate, and patience runs thin.

These aren’t just psychological traits, but downstream effects of a body system stuck in overdrive. The result? A society where vigilance, competition, and hyper-reactivity have become the new baseline.

The Quest for Relief: Dopamine, Endorphins, and Addictive Behaviors

TRPV1 and TRPA1 are not just pain and stress sensors. They play key roles in the circuits that govern pleasure and reward, especially dopamine and endorphin release.

Why does this matter? Chronic activation leaves us craving quick fixes—those brief dopamine or endorphin surges that cut through the stress.

Snacking: The urge for salty, sweet, or high-fat foods—especially processed “comfort” snacks—rises with each new spike in background anxiety.
Technology and social media use: Doomscrolling, chasing likes, or checking notifications, all seeking tiny emotional lifts.
Caffeine and sugar: The morning coffee ritual morphs into an all-day need for stimulation and artificial calm, as natural energy regulation falters.
Risky behaviors and compulsions: Gambling, shopping, vaping, or using substances can all serve as biochemical workarounds to soothe the now-hyperactive sensory network.
Screen time for children: When a child’s nerves are already on edge and trouble focusing is constant, the relief of a tablet or game is hard to resist.

In essence, the more our body’s alarm system is triggered, the more we chase these “little rewards”—not because of weak willpower, but because our biology is actively seeking anything to restore balance.

Wired and Tired: The Burnout Phenomenon

The world is more wired—and tired—than ever. This paradox is easy to see in daily routines: people power through fatigue with bursts of energy, only to crash later. They oscillate from stressed-out productivity to exhausted withdrawal.

Chronic TRPV1 and TRPA1 activation drives this pattern by:

Flooding the nervous system with stress mediators that keep the brain vigilant at all costs.
Disturbing sleep quality, making true rest hard to achieve.
Fueling cycles of late-night phone checking, comfort snacking, or restless activity, while robbing us of restorative downtime and deep sleep.

The cost: widespread reports of burnout, persistent tiredness, and the sense that even weekends or vacations don’t recharge us like they used to.

When Chronic Stress Looks Like Neurological or Immune Disease

Beyond mood and addiction, research links chronic overactivation of these receptors to serious health concerns:

Chronic pain: Nerve endings become so sensitive that pain persists long after an injury is gone.
Migraine: Both TRPV1 and TRPA1 are implicated in migraine attacks and hypersensitivity.
Neurodegeneration: Excessive calcium influx through TRPV1 channels has been associated with neurodegenerative disorders affecting sensory disturbances, cognitive function, movement, and behavioral changes.
ADHD and attention issues: Hyper-excitability and ongoing stress blunt the feedback loops necessary for focus, patience, and learning.
Autoimmune and inflammatory diseases: Chronic inflammation, fueled in part by neurogenic triggers, plays a decisive role in the rise of modern “mystery” illnesses.

Why the “Modern Mood” Looks Like This

It’s easy to dismiss rising rates of anxiety, irritability, and inattention as just the result of fast-paced culture, technology, or poor habits. But there’s mounting evidence that chronic, subtle overstimulation is driving a new kind of baseline mood—one where stress, vigilance, and the constant chase for comfort become “normal.”

Social media and self-help trends urge us to strive for better routines, stricter diets, more supplements, and greater productivity. The chase for perfection—restless, tiring, and endless—may be a culture-wide symptom of bodies locked in a stress response they cannot shut off. In this light, today’s wellness epidemic looks less like personal failure and more like a signal that our efforts to fix ourselves ignore the invisible biochemical pressures shaping our days.

The Public Health Puzzle

Synthetic vitamin A was introduced with the best of intentions, helping address deficiencies that once caused devastating illness. But our food system has changed. Now, nearly every processed or “healthy” food includes this additive, and the dose may be far higher—and more chronic—than ever anticipated.

Policymakers, manufacturers, and health advocates need to ask: How many of today’s mental health, neurological, and immune challenges are rooted in exposures we have yet to take seriously? And how do we redesign our food and health systems to let the body reset, rather than be primed for stress into the future?

Moving Forward: Awareness and Action

Change starts with personal and collective awareness. Here’s what you can do:

Check ingredient labels for “vitamin A palmitate” and “retinyl acetate.” Consider alternatives.
Choose more foods with naturally occurring vitamin A: carrots, sweet potatoes, eggs, butter, and moderate amounts of liver.
Recognize that restlessness, anxiety, and cravings for reward may have a physiological root. Lifestyle changes are important—but so is reducing chronic background stress from environmental triggers.
Support research and push for honest, transparent labeling and public oversight.

We don’t need to be perfect. Nor should we blame ourselves for every moment of exhaustion, craving, or emotional spiral. But we should have honest conversations—with ourselves, our doctors, and our society—about the hidden stressors quietly shaping our health.

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