stress
Chronic Stress is Detrimental to Health
Stress is not just a state of mind. It can manifest itself in many physical ways as well. After all, it is stress that propels the body into the ‘fight or flight’ response. Stress can trigger migraine headaches and cause ulcers, increase heart rate, and elevate blood pressure. If the body is left in a heightened state of stress, the immune system can become weak leaving the person susceptible to infection and serious illness.
Troubled Children Can Increase Parents’ Stress, Even as Adults
Addiction and mental illnesses have been called "family diseases" because these types of behavioral health problems affect the well-being of the entire household. Now, researchers have proven that children who have led poor lifestyles—such as substance abuse, chronic behavioral health issues, problems with the law, or financial troubles— well into adulthood still pose a major threat to their parents’ overall well-being, even if their siblings were more successful in life.
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Study Examines Unhealthy Behaviors in Response to Stress
When people are under chronic stress, they tend to smoke, drink, use drugs and overeat to help cope with stress. These behaviors trigger a biological cascade that helps prevent depression, but they also contribute to a host of physical problems that eventually contribute to early death. That is the claim of University of Michigan social scientist James S. Jackson and colleagues in an article published in the May 2010 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The theory helps explain a long-time epidemiological puzzle: why African Americans have worse physical health than whites but better psychiatric health.
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Resilience Factor Low in Mice with Depression
Scientists have discovered a mechanism that helps to explain resilience to stress, vulnerability to depression and how antidepressants work. The new findings, in the reward circuit of mouse and human brains, have spurred a high tech dragnet for compounds that boost the action of a key gene regulator there, called deltaFosB.
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Biological Link Between Stress, Anxiety, and Depression
Scientists at the University of Western Ontario have discovered the biological link between stress, anxiety and depression. By identifying the connecting mechanism in the brain, this high impact research led by Stephen Ferguson of Robarts Research Institute shows exactly how stress and anxiety could lead to depression. The study also reveals a small molecule inhibitor developed by Ferguson, which may provide a new and better way to treat anxiety, depression and other related disorders. The findings are published online in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
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Study Examines Connection of Stress, Anxiety and Depression in the Brain
Is there a biological link between stress, anxiety and depression? Researchers at the Robarts Research Institute and the University of Western Ontario think so, as presented in this recent Science Daily post. They believe that by identifying the connecting mechanism in the brain, the research demonstrates exactly how stress and anxiety can lead to depression.
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Chronic Workplace Stress and Lack of Exercise Linked to Obesity
A new study has found that chronic job stress and lack of physical activity are strongly associated with being overweight or obese. Unexpectedly, researchers also found that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables did little to offset the effect of chronic job stress on weight gain among the employees, who were mostly sedentary. Instead, exercise seemed to be the key to managing stress and keeping a healthy weight.
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Stress May Lead to Grinding Teeth at Night
People who are stressed by daily problems or trouble at work seem to be more likely to grind their teeth at night, a new study has found. Researchers writing in BioMed Central’s open access journal Head & Face Medicine studied the causes of “sleep bruxism,” or gnashing teeth during the night, finding that it was especially common in those who try to cope with stress by escaping from difficult situations.
Stress and Depression Trigger Obesity in Girls
Researchers have found that depression raises stress hormone levels in adolescent boys and girls but may lead to obesity only in girls. Early treatment of depression could help reduce stress and control obesity, which is a major health issue.
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Children More Prone to Stress Thrive Depending Upon Home Environment
There are so many negative things about stress, it is a wonder it doesn’t have a more prominent focus in medical research. A new study by scientists at the University of British Columbia, the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of California, Berkeley and featured in Science Daily, examines the role of stress in children.
Those children who tend to be significantly reactive to stress tend to be more vulnerable to adversity and experience more behavior and health problems than their peers. This new longitudinal study suggests that highly reactive children are also more likely to do well when they are raised in supportive environments.
“Parents and teachers may find that sensitive children, like orchids, are more challenging to raise and care for, but they can bloom into individuals of exceptional ability and strength when reared in a supportive, nurturing, and encouraging environment,” said Jelena Obradović, an assistant professor in the School of Education at Stanford University, a University of British Columbia professional when she led the study.
In this study, researchers found that children with significantly stronger biological reactions to a series of mildly stressful tasks designed to look like challenges in their daily lives were more affected by their family contexts, whether they were good or bad.
In contrast with what the researchers were expecting, these children were also more likely to thrive when they were raised in caring, low-stress families due to their sensitiveness to the supportive and nurturing qualities of such environments.
“The study tells us that when children are highly susceptible to stress, it’s not always bad news, but rather should be considered in terms of the type of environment they live in,” explained Obradović.
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