“Let's talk about stress.” This is not a conversation topic a patient would expect to be discussing with a family doctor after a check up. However, the relationship between health problems and stress is not an uncommon argument for doctors nowadays. For a long time, health professionals tried to find the appropriate medical treatments for health problems and causes of the diseases but, stress was not considered as a starting point. When recent studies started emphasizing the affects of prolonged stress in the body biologically and psychologically, it became one of the most important topics for psychologists, as well as the medical world. The recent studies related many diseases, especially diabetes, obesity, asthma, cardiovascular diseases and even cancer to stress.
1. It affects your immune system
Stress is our response to challenging and arduous situations in daily life. It is a process of encountering the information and circumstances and being in a tense mental state. Depending on the time frame, it can be as friendly as an encouraging push to achieve a goal or as dangerous as a life threatening predator.
The research done by Sheldon Cohen and his team at the Carnegie Mellon University prevails a truth about a human body’s response to long-term stress. According to the study, stress causes irregularity in cortisol hormone production. Cortisol is a hormone that is responsible for inflammatory regulation to keep immune system sufficient and the failure of it paves a road to many diseases. Cohen’s discovery was tested several times by introducing a cold virus to healthy subjects and also to subjects with severe stress to measure biological changes. As a result, the study showed that the adults under intensive stress have a higher chance of developing diseases than adults with less stress.
According to Cohen, when under stress, cells of the immune system are unable to respond to hormonal control, and consequently, produce levels of inflammation that promote diseases. Because inflammation plays a role in many diseases such as cardiovascular, asthma and autoimmune disorders, this model suggests why stress impacts them as well.
2. It makes you make wrong decisions
While Cohen and his team focused on the relationship between stress and the immune system, another study done by Mara Mather of the University of Southern California and Nicole R. Lighthall, focuses on behavioral changes of human beings under stress. According to Mather’s research, while making a difficult decision in life people, who are under stress tend to focus on the positive outcomes of their decision without considering the drawbacks. In other words, if we are stressed out and want to get out of the situation, the action we take may not be the right one. Our brain shuts down the logical decision-making mechanism and goes into fight or flight mode. That’s why our next wrong decision paves a road to depression.
They also linked their studies to people with addictions. The study indicated that people with addictions have an uncontrollable urge to get a reward without considering the drawbacks of the substances under stress.
