A promising, yet relatively unexplored factor that may influence a person's stress response, is diet. Diet can affect the physiological response to stress, but relationships between diet quality and the chronic stress marker allostatic load (AL) are insufficiently studied. Furthermore, sex, age, and BMI may interact with diet quality to influence AL. 358 adults were recruited across predetermined sex, age, and BMI ranges. Cluster analysis of 13 Healthy Eating Index (HEI) sub-scores across all participants revealed six distinct diet quality patterns (HEI-P). We found sex and HEI-P interacted (P_HEIxSex = 0.0232) to affect AL, reflecting a significantly different AL between women and men consuming a diet more closely aligned with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans for dairy, refined grains, and sodium consumption, but less aligned for added sugar, saturated fat, and fruits/vegetables intake. Sex and HEI-P also interacted to affect cholesterol (P_HEIxSex = 0.0157), norepinephrine (P_HEIxSex = 0.0315), epinephrine (P_HEIxSex = 0.0204), and systolic blood pressure (P_HEIxSex = 0.0457) but, compared to total allostatic load, no individual component of this biomarker explained the entire array of sex by HEI-P interactions. Our results suggest that differences in HEI-P and sex interact to influence physiological stress load which, in turn, may help resolve discrepancies in diet and sex-related disease risk.

一个可能影响一个人的压力反应的有希望但相对未开发的因素是饮食。饮食会影响对压力的生理反应，但饮食质量与慢性压力标志物平衡负荷 (AL) 之间的关系尚未得到充分研究。此外，性别、年龄和 BMI 可能与饮食质量相互作用以影响 AL。在预定的性别、年龄和 BMI 范围内招募了 358 名成年人。对所有参与者的 13 个健康饮食指数 (HEI) 子分数的聚类分析揭示了六种不同的饮食质量模式 (HEI-P)。我们发现性和 HEI-P 相互作用（P _HEIxSex = 0.0232) 影响 AL，反映了女性和男性之间的 AL 显着不同，她们的饮食更接近于美国人的乳制品、精制谷物和钠摄入量饮食指南，但在添加糖、饱和脂肪和水果方面不太一致/蔬菜摄入量。性别和 HEI-P 也相互作用影响胆固醇 (P _HEIxSex  = 0.0157)、去甲肾上腺素 (P _HEIxSex  = 0.0315)、肾上腺素 (P _HEIxSex  = 0.0204) 和收缩压 (P _HEIxSex = 0.0457）但是，与总的稳态负荷相比，该生物标志物的单个成分没有通过 HEI-P 相互作用解释整个性别阵列。我们的研究结果表明，HEI-P 和性别的差异相互作用影响生理压力负荷，这反过来可能有助于解决饮食和性别相关疾病风险的差异。