Understanding the have-knots: The role of stress in just about
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Stress, to put it bluntly, is bad for you. It can kill you, in fact. A study now reveals that stress causes deterioration in everything from your gums to your heart and can make you more susceptible to everything from the common cold to cancer. Thanks to new research crossing the disciplines of psychology, medicine, neuroscience, and genetics, the mechanisms underlying the connection are rapidly becoming understood.
The first clues to the link between stress and health were provided in the 1930s by Hans Selye, the first scientist to apply the word
Stress begins with the perception of danger by the brain, and it appears that continued stress can actually bias the brain to perceive more danger by altering brain structures such as those which govern the perception of and response to threat. Prolonged exposure to cortisol inhibits the growth of new neurons, and can cause increased growth of the amygdala, the portion of the brain that controls fear and other emotional responses.
The end result is heightened expectation of and attention to threats in the environment. Stress hormones also inhibit neuron growth in parts of the hippocampus, a brain area essential in forming new memories. In this way, stress results in memory impairments and impairs the brain
People who report more minor irritants in their lives also have more mental and physical health problems than those who encounter fewer hassles. And recent research shows that PTSD may be the result of stressors adding up like building blocks, remodeling the plastic brain in a cumulative rather than a once-and-for-all fashion.
But the best known of stress
The idea that stress directly causes coronary heart disease has been around since the 1950s; although once controversial, the direct stress-cardiac link is now well-documented by many studies. For instance, men who faced chronic stresses at work or at home ran a 30 percent higher likelihood of dying over the course of a nine-year study; in another study, individuals reporting neglect, abuse, or other stressors in childhood were over three times as likely as nonstressed individuals to develop heart disease in adulthood.
Adding insult to injury, stress may even have a selfperpetuating effect. Depression and heart disease, for example, are not only the results of stress, but also causes of (more) stress. Consequently, the chronically stressed body can appear less like a thermostat than like a wailing speaker placed too close to a microphone
Specifically, the amount of stress encountered in early life sensitizes an organism to a certain level of adversity; high levels of early life stress may result in hypersensitivity to stress later, as well as to adult depression.
A history of various stressors such as abuse and neglect in early life are a common feature of those with chronic depression in adulthood, for example.
At McGill University in Montreal, Michael J. Meaney and his colleagues have studied mother and infant rats, using rat maternal behavior as a model of early life stress and its later ramifications in humans. The key variable in the world of rat nurturance is licking and grooming. Offspring of rat mothers who naturally lick and groom their pups a lot are less easily startled as adults and show less fear of novel or threatening situations
By the same token, low-licking-and-grooming rat mothers are themselves more fearful than the more nurturant rat moms; but again, female offspring of those non-nurturant mothers foster-parented by nurturant mothers show less fear and are themselves more nurturant when they have pups of their own.
This indicates that the connection between maternal nurturance and stress responsiveness is not simply genetic, but that fearfulness and nurturance are transmitted from generation to generation through maternal behavior.
The vicious cycle of stress hormones biasing us to perceive more threat and react with an increased stress response might seem like some kind perverse joke played by nature
The stress response is a necessary response to danger.
For animals, including most likely our hominid ancestors, behavioral transmission of individual differences in stress reactivity from parents to offspring makes sense as an adaptation to fluctuating levels of danger in the environment.
Animals raised in chronically adverse conditions (e.g., high conflict, material deprivation) may expect more of the same in the near future; so in effect, the maternal treatment of offspring attunes them to the level of stress they may expect to encounter in their lives. As such, a response that seems baffling and counterproductive in a modern, civilized context may make more sense in the context of our distant evolutionary past.
Even depression has been theorized as playing an adaptive role in certain contexts.
The inactivity, lack of motivation, loss of interest in pleasurable activities like sex, and withdrawal from social relationships experienced by depressed people closely resemble
In a natural setting, the hopeless attitude of depression may be the most adaptive for an organism infected with a pathogen: The best strategy for survival is not to expend energy fruitlessly and become exposed to predators, but to hunker down, hide from threats, and direct energy to immune processes where it
And it turns out that baboons suffer from depression and other stress-related disorders, just like people do. According to Stanford neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky, who has studied stress in baboon troops, it is the relative safety from predators and high amounts of leisure time enjoyed by some primates
Besides heart disease, PTSD, and depression, chronic stress has been linked to ailments as diverse as intestinal problems, gum disease, erectile dysfunction, adult-onset diabetes, growth problems, and even cancer. Chronic rises in stress hormones have been shown to accelerate the growth of precancerous cells and tumors; they also lower the body
For many years, it was believed that the main causal link between stress and disease was the immune suppression that occurs when the body redirects its energy toward the fight-or-flight response. But recent research has revealed a far more nuanced picture.
Stress is known to actually enhance one important immune response, inflammation, and increasingly this is being seen as the go-between in various stress-related diseases.
Ordinarily, inflammation is how the healthy body deals with damaged tissue: Cells at the site of infections or injuries produce signaling chemicals called cytokines, which in turn attract other immune cells to the site to help repair it. Cytokines also travel to the brain and are responsible for initiating sickness behavior. Overactive cytokine production has been found to put individuals at greater risk for a variety of aging-related illnesses.
Cytokines may be an important mediator in the relationship between stress and heart disease. When the arteries feeding the heart are damaged, cytokines induce more blood flow, and thus more white blood cells, to the site. White blood cells accumulate in vessel walls and, over time, become engorged with cholesterol, becoming plaques; these may later become destabilized and rupture, causing heart attacks.
Cytokine action also has been implicated in the link between stress and depression. People suffering from clinical depression have shown 40
And about 50 percent of cancer patients whose immune responses are artificially boosted through the administration of cytokines show depressive symptoms.
The close connection between inflammation and both depression and heart disease has led some researchers to theorize that inflammation may be what mediates the two-way street between these two conditions: Depression can lead to heart disease, but heart disease also often leads to depression.
Sleep may be part of this puzzle too, as disturbed sleep, which often goes with anxiety and depression, increases levels of proinflammatory cytokines in the body.
Not everyone responds the same way to stress. Personality traits like negativity, pessimism, and neuroticism are known to be risk factors for stress-related disease, as are anger and hostility.
In the late 1950s, Friedman and Rosenman identified a major link between stress and health with their research on the
This personality was found to be a strong predictor of heart disease, and later research clarified the picture: The salient factors in the relationship between the Type A personality and health are mainly anger, hostility, and a socially dominant personality style (for example, tending to interrupt other people while they are talking).
When negative emotions like anger are chronic, it is as if the body is in a constant state of fight or flight.
There is now evidence that another trait associated with success-striving in the modern world
When goals are not readily attainable, the inability to detach from them may produce frustration, exhaustion, rumination on failures, and lack of sleep. These in turn activate harmful inflammatory responses that can lead to illness and lowered immunity.
Studies also have shown that optimistic people have lower incidence of heart disease, better prognosis after heart surgery, and longer life.
The effects of a positive attitude on immunity were shown in a study by Sheldon Cohen, Carnegie Mellon University, and his colleagues, in which individuals were exposed to a cold virus in a laboratory setting and watched over six days. Those with a positive emotional style were less likely to develop colds than were individuals with low levels of positive affect. Positive affect was also found to be correlated with reduced symptom severity and reduced pain.
Personality and environmental factors are not the whole story when it comes to stress.
The next frontier of stress research is the rapidly growing field of behavioral genetics. Modeling the interaction of genetic and environmental influences is no longer a matter of weighing the relative input of nature and nurture. The two intertwine in subtle and complicated ways, with environments affecting gene expression, and vice versa, throughout life. Thus, the current watchword is
One major advance in this area was the discovery by Avshalom Caspi, University of Wisconsin, and his colleagues of a link between stress sensitivity and a particular gene called 5HTTLPR. Findings suggest certain genetic makeup seems to increase the risk for a serious illness through the mechanism of increased sensitivity to stressful occurrences.
Nathan Fox, University of Maryland, and his colleagues subsequently reported that children with two short alleles of the 5HTTLPR gene, whose mothers also reported receiving low social support, were more likely to show behavioral inhibition (fearfulness and a tendency to withdraw) at age 7. Those receiving high support did not show the tendency, and those with the long alleles but receiving low support also appeared
But look on the bright side: The newly refined science of stress could lead to new drug therapies that can control stress or inhibit its effects on health. Also, depression and anxiety are not only results of stress, but also causes, and existing therapeutic and medical treatments for these conditions can help change how people perceive threats, put their life challenges in context, and cut stressors down to manageable size. The cycle doesn
Relaxation techniques such as meditation and yoga, for example, have been confirmed to quell stress demons.
Even if you are a determined workaholic glued to your cell phone or a fearful and angry urban neurotic, stress-reduction methods are readily available to cope with stress in the short term and even alter perceptions of stressors in the long term. The bottom line: Stress is not inevitable.
Current Research on Stress:
At the University of Chicago, APS President John Cacioppo and Louise Hawkley have studied the health effects of social isolation, an increasingly common malady in the modern world. Among their findings are that lonely older adults show more arterial stiffening and higher blood pressure than their nonlonely counterparts and that the association between loneliness and blood pressure increases with age.
In middle-aged and older adults (but not young adults), loneliness is associated with higher levels of epinephrine in the blood, and lonely people of all ages show elevated levels of cortisol. By desensitizing the mechanism whereby cortisol turns off more cortisol production, the social isolation frequently experienced by older adults may hasten physical decline. Lonely individuals of all ages also have poorer sleep than nonlonely people and therefore get less of sleep
Yang Hui dieticians
This three-day college entrance examination should pay special attention to food hygiene, washing raw melons to Yongkaishuidang or disinfection; do salad vegetables, spices and garlic should be Jiacu can sterilization can increase appetite.
College Entrance Examination when the summer, hot weather, sweating more loss not only large body fluids, but also consumed in various nutrients, particularly inorganic, if not promptly added that the humoral imbalance can occur; days heat has also affected the spleen and stomach, if insufficient sleep , will be greatly diminished appetite. Therefore, the diet should be clear to fill, Spleen, Qushu principle.
Recommendation 1: eat some breakfast
Bunao should eat some foods, such as fish, soybean products, lean meat, eggs, milk and fresh vegetables, fruit and other, less Chifeirou, fried food. Do not over eating and drinking, it will reduce the sensitivity of the brain, affecting examination results. Breakfast should have food, dry with thin, the main dish balance. Protein-rich food Xianyadan, ham, silk tofu, cooked soybeans, Jiangdoufu, cooking Peanut, Xiaocong, such as tofu mix.
Recommendation 2: Lunch emphasize nutrition
In the morning of the various nutrients and calories consumed large enough to eat lunch should be eating meat, eggs and other foods with higher energy, and good afternoon to prepare for the examination. Lunch should be adequate intake of calories and nutrients. Do the same with grain, meat, vegetables, and beans, with thin stem.
Recommendation 3: eight full to eat dinner
This has nothing to do with the rest of the time, even sleep late, do not eat more than the food, especially should not be Yixiaohua not eat greasy food, so as not to lead to indigestion, impact test. Dinner also difficult to over-eat. Scientists found that after over-eating in the brain called a fiber bud cell growth factor of the material will be significantly increased, the pace will slow down the brain, reducing efficiency.
In addition, eating three meals a day and can increase fruit; best choice drink fresh fruit juice. But not too much cold, so as to avoid the digestion and absorption of gastrointestinal dysfunction.
Bunao resisted
Daughter to the college entrance examination, I deliberately Advisory nutrition experts, to prepare her recipes this week that the examination of her useful.
Monday
Breakfast: sweet potato porridge, pies
Lunch: kelp pork braised in brown sauce, mixed -
Dinner: meatball radish, cabbage bean curd
Comments: daughter said of vegetables too.
Tuesday
Breakfast: polenta, fresh dim sum, Chinese toon tofu
Lunch: sweet and sour fish, fried-wire
Dinner: fried duck-pineapple, mixed Eggs
Comments: Breakfast increase meat food benefit Bunao.
Wednesday
Breakfast: ham Lotus porridge, pea -
Lunch: pig meat, celery shrimp
Dinner: Rumo tofu, Majiangbancai heart
Comments: husband said that today s Catering relatively successful.
Thursday
Breakfast: Soybean porridge, peanut cake, cucumber D
Lunch: beef-potatoes, cauliflower mushrooms
Dinner:
Comments: daughter does not love beans, a real headache.
Friday
Breakfast: Lily porridge, fried noodles, boiled eggs
Lunch: Doufuanrouding, pea seedlings
Dinner: fried fish, potatoes Wire
Comments: Doufuanrouding as recipe is done, taste good.
Saturday
Breakfast: milk, onions Ma biscuits, ham Jiandan
Lunch: Ma Great tofu, shiitake mushrooms Rape
Dinner: Shizitou, pea seedlings
Comments: I added a point inside Shizitou Xiehuang, taste very fresh.
Sunday
Breakfast: Tremella share Danchaofan
Lunch: carrot ribs,
Related: Understanding the have-knots: The role of stress in just about
Additional information:
From www.eurekalert.org:
New studies show a link between acid reflux and esophageal cancer and reveal a. Experiments on tissue from the gut suggest that drugs containing.
Provide a selection of terms used in the quiz and ask pupils to link related. Suggest that pupils ask senior members of their family to describe.
Dr Bruce West suggest beginning with seedless grapes or watermelon since these are. The Secret Link Between Indigestion and Disease, by Dr Bruce West.
These clinical observations suggest a link between gastrointestinal and brain. hormone produced in our body that controls digestion.
Look on the Manufacturer Info page to link to pharmaceutical company pages. and said they would get increasingly worse, but did not suggest.
Ibs pain symptoms link article. But people suggest that there is this constellation.
We suggest a consultation with a Sen practitioner at one of Sen stores to best analyse the root causes of your Poor Digestion.
Because it dissolves, it does little to aid in the digestion of whole seeds. For proper food digestion, it is more important that a bird be fed an.
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