Stress Can Jeopardize Our Health

I’ve just returned from a vacation cruise and am frazzled and overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to catch up on. In other words, I’m stressed and that isn’t good.

Stress affects us all in different ways, but there is growing evidence that when our stress levels go up, our health can be put in jeopardy.

Two new studies are helping to nail down the effects stress has on our lives and they’re both important.

Researchers at Ohio State University say the effects of stress on the immune system can lead to poor health. This comes from years of studies involving scientists at five universities.

Stress apparently can weaken the immune system and make us more susceptible to infectious diseases, the researchers report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Immune changes associated with psychological stress are small but important enough to have biological consequences, the researchers report.

For example, stress is shown to suppress T-cell responses and lower antibody levels in patients getting vaccinations for Hepatitis B and influenza.

An interesting conclusion to this study is that researchers believe lifestyle changes that reduce stress can increase a person’s resistance to some infectious diseases. Lifestyle adjustments for better health would be such things as gaining social support and companionship, eating well, regular exercise, and getting enough sleep.

Doctors should also focus on the role stress plays in such infections and diseases as asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis and cancer.

A second study on stress by Ohio State University researchers shows how wounds do not heal as rapidly in people who are stressed out.

The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, also shows how psychological stress can weaken a person’s health by increasing the level of some hormones in the blood.

The presence of the blood hormones can slow the delivery of cytokines – which facilitate healing – to the site of an injury.

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