Stress and the Strung Out Immune System – How Stress Affects Immunity

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All this being said, many of us would not even attempt to change our lifestyles just to reduce how often we get colds since a cold could be interpreted as the cost of working to achieve one’s goals. Besides, for most of us, colds are not that disruptive and some good cold medicine can reduce the symptoms considerably, making having a cold reasonably tolerable. However, if we think of frequent colds as the “canary in the coal mine”, there to provide early warning against something more dangerous, we can start to understand what more recent research is telling us about stress and our immune systems.

Common secondary effects of colds such as bacterial sinus infections, ear infections, or the more serious bronchitis and pneumonia infections occur more readily when our immune system is already worn down from the process of fighting one or more colds. Any one of these infections can easily knock us down for a couple of weeks. When we find that we are suffering from such infections, we can easily relate the infection back to the cold and with a little thought, back to the stress that likely contributed to getting the cold in the first place. However, in many other situations, the relation of stress on our immune system and the development of sickness is not as easy to see.

Most of us are likely aware that research has identified a relationship between stress and heart attacks, stroke, and gastrointestinal problems such as ulcers. Chronic stress has also been associated with a 4 to 8 year reduction in life span. While these are obviously important reasons in of themselves to consider life stresses, researchers are still identifying many other ways in which stress affects our health.

Women with HPV or Human papillomavirus, a common STD, are more likely to develop Cervical Cancer than women who have the STD but are not facing stress. Other research from the University of Texas has discovered that stress increases the rate at which ovarian cancer tumors grow. More rapid growth of tumors reduces the chances of early detection and treatment so such findings are disturbing. Add to this the fact that cancers such as Non-Hodgkin lymphoma are being diagnosed at double the rate they were in the 1970s and that this cancer is linked to a weakened immune system, then we can see that stress on our systems can be far more damaging than just a higher number of colds.

Besides cancer, stress has other effects on those with preexisting conditions. Stress triggers asthma attacks in those suffering from asthma. Researchers from Ohio State University Medical Center have also determined that stress increases the severity of allergic reactions in those with allergies. In both cases, it is the effects of stress on the immune system itself that cause the problem. Finally, for those with diabetes, stress can throw off the blood sugar levels and make regulation of the disease far more difficult. All these findings point to just how many ways in which stress can affect our health.

Conclusions

The effects of stress on the immune system are incredibly complex, but overall. chronic stress can simply be described as bad for our health. In today’s stress-inducing society, it becomes clear that individuals should be taking active steps to manage stress as a part of managing their overall health. The first step in this process is the familiar idea of recognizing that you might have a problem. However, if you are not convinced, just remember the next time you get a few colds back to back that the canary may be dead in the cage.

Related Links

http://www.i-newswire.com/pr15942.html

http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/beaton.html

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000678.htm

http://www.askdrsears.com/html/8/t081000.asp

http://www.uihealthcare.com/news/news/2008/03/24cancer.html

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/82964.php

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/epinorepi.htm

http://www.healthabc.info/html/cervical-cancer-hpv-vaccine/stress-and-cervical-cancer-risk-link-5792.html

http://my.clevelandclinic.org/disorders/Asthma/hic_Stress_and_Asthma.aspx

http://www.revver.com/video/1110732/study-stress-anxiety-make-your-allergies-worse/

http://health.newspicker.org/26376/should-care-about-diabetes-kansas-department-health/

https://www.health.harvard.edu/special_health_reports/stress_control

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