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April 3rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda MONDAY, April 2 (HealthDay News) — A new study involving the
common cold may help explain why stress, which dampens the immune system,
seems to trigger inflammation in many people.
That would appear contradictory, because the immune system creates
inflammation (for example, the redness around a wound) to help the body
heal. But the research suggests that high and long-term levels of stress
contribute to inflammation.
In turn, the inflammation can lead to conditions such as heart disease,
asthma and autoimmune disorders, in which the immune system turns against
the body.
The research “suggests the kind of diseases that are going to be
affected by stress,” said study lead author Sheldon Cohen, professor of
psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “They’re diseases
in which inflammation is a key aspect.”
Over the past five to six decades, researchers have linked stress to
disease, Cohen said. “There’s not much question that stressed people are
at greater risk for developing some of these diseases or having them
become more severe. A little bit less clear is exactly how that happens.
How does stress get under the skin to affect disease outcomes?”
One possibility is that stressed people are simply unhealthier —
smoking and drinking more and sleeping less. In that area, the challenge
is figuring out which came first, stress or unhealthy decisions.
The other possibility is that the body’s hormones that respond to
stress play a role.
In the new study, investigators performed two experiments, involving
more than 300 people, to gain more insight. The researchers asked the
participants about the stresses in their lives and then exposed them to
cold viruses to see if they got sick.
After adjusting the statistics for various factors, the researchers
found that people whose bodies had higher levels of ongoing psychological
stress — such as that caused by divorce — were less able to dampen
inflammation. This seemed to have something to do with their immune cells
being less sensitive to a hormone that turns off inflammation.
The people with more stress were also at higher risk of developing a
cold, according to the report published online April 2 in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Andrew Miller, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at
Emory University School of Medicine who studies how stress affects the
immune system, said the research “provides a very concrete example of how
chronic stress and its effects on the immune system can affect our daily
lives in a very real-world context.”
However, this is just part of a wider picture of how stress affects the
body, Miller cautioned.
“In ancestral times, a stressful environment would have a high
likelihood of involving some form of fighting and being wounded and
thereby infected,” he said. “Inflammation is a process in the body that is
essential to fighting infections and healing wounds. Therefore, the
induction of inflammation by stress is a way for the body to prepare
itself for battle in an environment that represents danger of attack.”
While the study uncovered an association between chronic psychological
stress and inflammation, it did not prove a cause-and-effect
relationship.
More information
For more about stress, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
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