Stress
Cascading effect of even minor early problems may explain serious teen violence
How do minor behavior problems and experiences early in life lead to serious acts of violence in teenagers? A group of researchers has found that the answer may lie in a cascading effect in which early life experiences lead to behaviors and new experiences that lead to yet other experiences that culminate in serious violent behavior.
The researchers found that children who had social and academic problems in elementary school were more likely to have parents who withdrew from supervision and monitoring when the children entered middle school. When this happened, children were more likely to make friends with other children who had deviant behavior, and this ultimately was more likely to lead teens to engage in serious and sometimes costly acts of violence. Interestingly, violent outcomes in girls followed largely the same developmental path as those for boys.
“The findings indicate that these trajectories are not inevitable but can be deflected at each subsequent era in development, through interactions with peers, school, and parents along the way,” notes Kenneth A. Dodge, William McDougall Professor of Public Policy and psychology and neuroscience, director of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University, and the study’s lead author. “Successful early intervention could redirect paths of antisocial development to prevent serious violent behavior in adolescence.”
Obese have minimal heartbeat response to stress
Contrary to their expectations, British researchers have found that when exposed to psychological stress, obese people show smaller changes in their heart rate compared with normal-weight individuals.
Dr. Douglas Carroll at the University of Birmingham, and colleagues there and at the University of Glasgow, examined the association between obesity and the magnitude of heart reactions to stress in 1,647 adults living in the community.
Blood pressure and heart rate were measured at rest and in response to psychological stress—performing mental math problems under a time deadline. Measurements were taken when the study began and 5 years later.
Chronic stress alters our genetic immune response
Most people would agree that stress increases your risk for illness and this is particularly true for severe long-term stresses, such as caring for a family member with a chronic medical illness. However, we still have a relatively limited understanding of exactly how stress contributes to the risk for illness. In the August 15th issue of Biological Psychiatry, researchers shed new light on one link between stress and illness by describing a mechanism through which stress alters immune function.
In a very promising preliminary study, Miller and colleagues found that the pattern of gene expression differed between caregivers of family members with cancer relative to a matched group of individuals who did not have this type of life stress. They found that among the caregivers, even though they had normal cortisol levels in their blood, the pattern of gene expression in the monocytes, a type of white blood cell involved in the body’s immune response, was altered so that they were relatively less responsive to the anti-inflammatory actions of cortisol, but relatively more responsive to pro-inflammatory actions of a transcription factor called nuclear factor-kappa B, or NF-κB. Gregory Miller, Ph.D., corresponding author, explains more simply that, although “caregivers have similar cortisol levels as controls, their cells seem to be ‘hearing’ less of this signal. In other words, something goes awry in caregivers’ white blood cells so they are not able to ‘receive’ the signal from cortisol that tells them to shut down inflammation.”
Thus, the current findings might help to explain why the caregivers would seem to be in a chronic pro-inflammatory state, a condition of immunologic activation. This activated state could contribute to the risk for a number of medical illnesses, such as depression, heart disease, and diabetes. Dr. Miller remarks that part of the importance of these findings is “because people have traditionally thought that higher cortisol is the reason that stress contributes to disease, but this work shows that, at least in caregivers, it’s actually the opposite - there’s too little cortisol signal being heard by the cells, rather than too much.”
High Resolution Heart Images Now Available at Peak Stress
While treadmill exercise stress testing is an essential tool in the prevention, detection and treatment of cardiovascular disease, physicians are often challenged to gain clear images of the heart when a patient is at peak stress level.
That is changing at the Ohio State University Medical Center where researchers have designed equipment to provide high resolution images of the heart at a critical stage of testing that have previously been difficult to obtain using standard testing procedures. Superior images of the heart are obtained with a test lasting less than one hour.
“In the past, we were constrained by the time lapse between the completion of exercise and capturing the images,” said Orlando “Lon” Simonetti, PhD, associate professor of internal medicine and radiology.
Measuring the stress of forested areas
Plants undergo stress because of lack of water, due to the heat or the cold or to excess of light. A research team from the University of the Basque Country have analysed the substances that are triggered in plants to protect themselves, with the goal of choosing the species that is best suited to the environment during reforestation under adverse environmental conditions.
Droughts, extreme temperatures, contamination, and so on – all are harmful to plants. On occasions, the damage is caused by humans. For example, as a consequence of cutting down trees, plants used to shady conditions may be exposed to an excess of light. However, in most cases it is nature itself that causes the stress. In spring, plants have sufficient average humidity and temperatures, i.e. what scientists deem ‘optimum conditions’. But in winter they have to withstand considerable cold and in summer, on the other hand, high temperatures and droughts: adverse environmental factors that generate stress situations. Thus, in winter and in summer, the light which under normal conditions would be a source of energy becomes excessive, given that the metabolism of the plants under these conditions is not able to assimilate it. This process is known as photo-oxidative stress.
Neurogenesis in the adult brain: The association with stress and depression
The brain is the key organ in the response to stress. Brain reactions determine what in the world is threatening and might be stressful for us, and regulate the stress responses that can be either adaptive or maladaptive. Chronic stress can affect the brain and lead into depression: Environmental stressors related to job or family situation are important triggers of depressive episodes and major life events such as trauma or abuse amongst the most potent factors inducing depression.
The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that major depression will soon be the world´s greatest public health burden. Thus optimising antidepressive therapy with regard to delayed or insufficient treatment response and unwanted side effects is urgent.
Since the development of novel antidepressants is based upon an improved neurobiological understanding of this condition, new information about the cellular changes that take place in the brain is required.
Stress May Lead Students to Stimulants
The performance pressures from end-of-semester exams and papers can take a toll on students, even leading them to turn to potentially harmful substances to keep them awake and alert.
Recent studies show that a growing number of high school and college students are turning to stimulants like ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) drugs and energy drinks to help them through their stress — particularly during exam time, says Jennifer Christner, M.D., an adolescent medicine specialist at the University of Michigan Health System.
“Studies have shown that anywhere from 5 to 35 percent of college students are misusing stimulants around stressful times with academics. There is also some evidence that high school students — anywhere from 8 to 10 percent — can misuse stimulants during these times,” she says.
Psychological Distress, Not Depression, Linked to Increased Risk of Stroke
Psychological distress, but not depression, may increase the risk of stroke, according to a study published in the March 4, 2008, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Previous studies have shown that stroke often leads to depression, but the evidence was mixed as to whether depression could lead to stroke.
“Stroke is among the leading causes of long-term disability and death worldwide,” said study author Paul Surtees, PhD, of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. “Understanding the mechanisms by which overall emotional health may increase stroke risk may inform stroke prevention and help identify those at increased stroke risk.”
Stress hormone impacts memory, learning in diabetic rodents
Diabetes is known to impair the cognitive health of people, but now scientists have identified one potential mechanism underlying these learning and memory problems. A new National Institutes of Health (NIH) study in diabetic rodents finds that increased levels of a stress hormone produced by the adrenal gland disrupt the healthy functioning of the hippocampus, the region of the brain responsible for learning and short-term memory. Moreover, when levels of the adrenal glucocorticoid hormone corticosterone (also known as cortisol in humans) are returned to normal, the hippocampus recovers its ability to build new cells and regains the “plasticity” needed to compensate for injury and disease and adjust to change.
The study appears in the Feb. 17, 2008, issue of Nature Neuroscience and was conducted by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the NIH. NIA’s Mark Mattson, Ph.D., and colleagues in the Institute’s Intramural Research Program performed the study with Alexis M. Stranahan, a graduate student at Princeton University in New Jersey.
“This research in animal models is intriguing, suggesting the possibility of novel approaches in preventing and treating cognitive impairment by maintaining normal levels of glucocorticoid,” said Richard J. Hodes, M.D., NIA director. “Further study will provide a better understanding of the often complex interplay between the nervous system, hormones and cognitive health.”
Workplace opportunities and stresses are both increasing
Teamworking and other modern employment practices can put as much strain on a woman’s family relationships as working an extra 120 hours a year, an extensive study of the British workforce funded by the Economic and Social Research Council suggests.
The research finds that while British employers have maintained long-term career relationships with employees in spite of competitive market pressures, they have devised ways of extracting more effort and higher performance. These practices include team-based forms of work organization, individual performance-related pay, and policies that emphasize the development of individual potential.
Floating effective for stress and pain
Relaxation in large, sound- and light-proof tanks with high-salt waterfloatingis an effective way to alleviate long-term stress-related pain. This has been shown by Sven-Åke Bood, who recently completed his doctorate in psychology, with a dissertation from Karlstad University in Sweden.
The dissertation confirms what earlier studies have indicated: sleep was improved, patients felt more optimistic, and the content of the vitalizing hormone prolactin increased. Anxiety, stress, depression, and perception of pain declined.
Parents less distressed than non-parents: survey
Parents may complain that their kids “drive them crazy,” but results of a survey suggest that the opposite might actually be true.
The survey of more than 33,400 U.S. adults identified lower levels of anxiety, depression, or other measures of psychological distress among parents than among non-parenting adults of the same age.
Researchers find evidence linking stress caused by the 9/11 disaster with low birth weight
Researchers have found evidence of an increase in low birth weights among babies born in and around New York City in the weeks and months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Writing in the journal Human Reproduction [1], they suggest that stress may have contributed to the effect.
Professor Brenda Eskenazi and colleagues studied data from birth certificates of 1,660,401 babies born in New York between January 1996 and December 2002. They divided the babies into those born in New York City (NYC) – whose mothers would, therefore, have been living closest to the disaster zone – and those born in “upstate” New York, which they defined as anyone living outside NYC, including Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties.
Anger, chronic stress tied to heart disease
For men with borderline-high blood pressure, an angry disposition may worsen the problem and raise the risk of eventual heart disease, a study published Monday suggests.
What’s more, researchers found, long-term stress may do the same in both men and women.
Cancer Patients, Spouses Report Similar Emotional Distress
A cancer diagnosis affects more than just the patient. A new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center finds spouses report similar physical and emotional quality of life as the patient.
The study found that what really impacted emotional distress - among both patients and their spouses - was whether the patient was newly diagnosed, facing a recurrence or living with advanced disease.
