New Research on Stress and Cancer

Monday September 29, 2008

As you probably know, stress can affect your health in many ways, both physical and mental/emotional. Headaches, backaches (all types of aches!) as well as more serious and lasting conditions like heart disease and depression, can have their origin with stress, or can originate elsewhere and be exacerbated by stress. In fact, because of the connection between stress and immunity, stress can literally affect every part of your health if you think about it. But don't think about it too much, or you might get stressed! (Little joke there.)

Illustrating this point, new research has even linked stress to cancer. While this may sound like a bit of a scary to read, the research comes with some important (and perhaps unexpected) findings on what you can do to stay healthy, so it's important to be informed! You'll likely feel empowered and more optimistic after reading about it.

Read the New Research on Stress and Breast Cancer

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September 29, 2008 at 11:36 am (1) Craig Maltby says:

Right on, Elizabeth. Just saw a show last week, a National Geographic production on PBS: “Killer Stress.” Covered a lot of ground. One finding, based on a Stanford researcher’s 30 years of observing baboons in Africa, showed that higher stressed baboons, those having to endure the “dominators” of a group, developed heigthened hormonal response over the years, resulting from a differential in stress levels. The result was accelerated physical aging. There are long-term physical consequences to stress.

September 29, 2008 at 12:55 pm (2) stress says:

Yes! I saw that, too. Wasn’t it an excellent program? It is truly astounding how many ways stress can impact the body! Here’s to keeping stress levels low this week…
=]

September 30, 2008 at 2:05 am (3) John Townsend says:

The research you cite is very interesting. I have read quite a number of papers over the years on stress and cancer and the trend line certainly suggests a causal link.

This becomes even more meaningful in the light of research undertaken at the Garven Institute in Sydney in December 2005. The researchers identified a particular neuorchemical released during stress (called Neuropeptide Y) which lowers immune response.

Lowered immune response means greater exposure to cancer.