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This article from Wired describes the work of Robert Sapolsky, who studies stress. It gives a good overview of the causes and costs of stress, some suggestions for how to cope, and fascinating news about work toward a vaccine against stress.
Sapolsky’s book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Third Edition describes how the body reacts to [...]
I’ve heard the meditation practices of Buddhism described as a sort of toolkit for improving the quality of life, and in the past few years I’ve blogged a few stories about the mental benefits of meditation. Those were mostly about forms of meditation that emphasize calm concentration, which may improve the ability to focus the [...]
If you read much about depression, you hear right away about serotonin, and maybe dopamine, neurotransmitters that are believed to be crucial to feelings of well-being. I hadn’t realized that stress hormones, in particular corticotropin releasing factor (CRF), are also implicated in depression. Overactivity in a particular area of the hypothalamus that produces CRF often [...]
Norman Cousins pioneered the idea of using humor as part of the treatment for medical illnesses, in conjunction with other therapies. Nearly 45 years ago he wrote a book, The anatomy of an illness, detailing his experience in using humor as part of his plan for overcoming a serious disease. At the time I don’t [...]
It’s more rat research today. In this study (carried out by a team led by Daniel Peterson at the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science), rats who were socially stressed showed a lower survival rate for new-born brain cells in the hippocampus. The stress consisted of young rats being exposed to older and meaner [...]
Here’s an article from Science Daily about Robert Sapolsky’s research into primate behavior and stress. Sapolsky, a neuroscientist at Stanford, has written an excellent book about how humans respond to stress (Why zebras don’t get ulcers), and this article sums up some of his material on how our fight-or-flight response works against us when we’re [...]
For some reason, male and female rats respond differently to a combination of isolation and stress. The females coped much better, reacting with a stronger immune response when their immune systems were challenged after a prolonged period of isolation and a brief period of acute stress. This press release from EurekAlert describes the research and [...]
Leptin, which has been recognized for awhile as a key hormone in controlling appetite and weight, is also linked to depression, at least in rats. It makes sense that appetite is linked to mood; who hasn’t felt too anxious or depressed to eat? But it’s not clear how this recent work with rats might translate [...]
Well, here’s something about the potential down-side of intimate relationships: in a recent study of couples at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, physical wounds in both partners healed more slowly after the couple had had an argument. Healing was slowed by a day or longer, and it appears that chronic high levels of [...]
Well, now for something about the short-term effects of food: Rats who sipped sugar water (as opposed to artificially sweetened or plain water) before being placed in stressful circumstances reacted less sharply to the stress. Their blood levels of stress hormones called glucocorticoids were lower; these hormones are useful in flight-or-fight situations, but prolonged exposure [...]
What and when you eat can, of course, have an immediate, short-term effect on your mood and behavior, but perhaps nutrients can also change personality and behavior for good, by changing the way that genes are expressed. Studies in rats show that an amino acid injected into the brain can have basically the same biochemical [...]
This press release from Carnegie-Mellon describes some very cool work on how facial expressions relate to how stressed we are. When people were put through a stressful experience, those who reacted with an angry or indignant facial expression had lower readings for various stress indicators (cortisol, heart rate, blood pressure) than those who looked frightened. [...]
I didn’t know this, but people who use heroin and other opiates are much more likely to have problems with anxiety. It turns out this is probably caused in part by the fact that the opiates themselves seem to leave animals more vulnerable to stress. Research on rats involved giving them either morphine or a [...]
Recent research shows that a warm hug from someone you care for can help you relax, even lowering your blood pressure and helping you face stressful situations more calmly. The beneficial effects are possibly due to the actions of oxytocin, a hormone that is instrumental in various reproductive functions and also appears to be linked [...]
It’s a stereotype that stress can make us feel like overeating, junk food in particular. Recent research indicates that stress might lead not only to overeating but to the accumulation of belly fat (the more harmful kind people carry in their middles and around their organs). The interesting thing is that the belly fat in [...]
This press releae describes some work on how elevated cortisol levels affect the brain. Cortisol levels go up when you are under stress. As you might guess, elevated levels are not especially good for brain functioning. Cortisol is a key part of the flight-or-fight response, which is fine if you can fight or flee, but [...]
Here’s a press release about some interesting work on depression, which describes physiological differences between depressed people who recently experienced significant stress and those who didn’t.
http://www.uoregon.edu/newscenter/31.3.05-Slavich.html
Research at the University of Maryland shows that emotional stress can have a negative effect on your blood vessels, while laughter can be beneficial. While there isn’t any indication yet why laughter or distress have the effect they do, the results do seem to indicate that laughter really is good for you. That’s all the [...]
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