Fagundes, Christopher P.2021-08-162021-08-162021-082021-08-12August 202Brown, Ryan L. "Bereavement and Food: An investigation of postprandial immune responses." (2021) Master’s Thesis, Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/111233">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/111233</a>.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/111233The death of a spouse is the most common stressful life event that adults are likely to face. As a result of prolonged physiological dysregulation, bereaved individuals are at considerable risk for morbidity and mortality, primarily in the first three months following bereavement and most commonly from heart disease. In my thesis, I examined how (a) bereavement status and (b) prolonged cognitive activation of a stressor (i.e., perseverative cognition) might influence inflammation after a high-fat meal. Following the death of one’s spouse, many bereaved individuals are at increased nutritional risk due to eating alone, skipping meals, and having a poorer overall diet. Bereaved spouses often attribute these changes to a loss of the shared experience of eating together. I hypothesized that people would experience different degrees of inflammation following a meal high in saturated fat based on (1) bereavement status and (2) their tendency to worry or ruminate (defined later as perseverative cognition). I recruited 14 recently bereaved and 14 matched controls who came to the lab for a blood draw before and 4 hours after eating a high saturated fat meal. Overall, there was mixed support for my hypotheses: (1) there were no reliable differences in postprandial inflammation based on whether a participant was bereaved or a matched control. (2) Although there was not an average increase in inflammation from pre- to post-meal in this study, higher levels of trait worry, but not rumination, were associated with increased postprandial inflammation, particularly among the bereaved participants.application/pdfengCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.Worrypostprandial inflammationbereavementruminationperseverative cognitionThesis2021-08-16