How Stress Kills: Your Mood and Behavior Influence Your Health
Inflammation can be substantially enhanced by stress and depression. Inflammation influences the onset and course of a spectrum of conditions associated with aging including cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's disease, and frailty and functional decline. Furthermore, stress and depression also contribute to greater risk for infection, prolonged infectious episodes, and delayed wound healing, all processes that indirectly fuel sustained proinflammatory cytokine production. Compounding the risks, health behaviors such as poor sleep are commonplace correlates of stress and depression that further enhance proinflammatory cytokine production. In addition to these pathways, stress and depression can permanently alter the responsiveness of the immune system; stressors can effectively “prime” the inflammatory response, promoting larger proinflammatory cytokine increases in response to subsequent stressors and/or minor infectious challenges. Through these pathways stress and depression may influence the incidence and progression of age-related diseases. Interventions that diminish stress or depression or inflammation may enhance health through their positive impact on immune and endocrine regulation; thus, two novel interventions are a primary focus of our current laboratory studies.
© 2006, The Ohio State University | Department of Psychology, 1885 Neil Avenue Mall | Columbus, Ohio 43210