There's a great article in August's Wired Magazine on Stress and Neuroscience (see http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/stress/ - full article not yet posted). Here is an excerpt:
Chronic stress, it turns out, is an extremely dangerous condition.
And it’s not just baboons: People are just as vulnerable to its effects as those low-ranking male apes. While stress doesn’t cause any single disease –ironically, the causal link between stress and ulcers has been largely disproved – it makes most diseases significantly worse. The list of ailments connected to stress is staggeringly diverse and includes everything from the common cold and lower-back pain to Alzheimer’s disease, major depressive disorder, and heart attack. Stress hollows out our bones and atrophies our muscles. It triggers adult onset diabetes and is a leading cause of male impotence. In fact, numerous studies of human longevity in developed countries have found that “psychosocial” factors such as stress are the single most important variable in determining the length of a life. It’s not that genes and risk factors like smoking don’t matter. It’s that our levels of stress matter more.
Furthermore, the effects of chronic stress directly counteract improvements in medical care and public health. Antibiotics, for instance, are far less effective when our immune system is suppressed by stress; that fancy heart surgery will work only if the patient can learn to shed stress. As Sapolsky notes, “You can give a guy a
What's really interesting is the finding that stress is caused not so much by being put into stressful situations, but by stressful situations accompanied by a sense of hopelessness, lack of control or disempowerment. Environmental factors such as being at the bottom of the "pecking order" in a very hierarchical company substantially reduces life span.
drug-coated stent, but if you don’t fix the stress problem, it won’t really matter. For so many conditions, stress is the major long-term risk factor. Everything else is a short-term fix.”
So telling stories that induce a sense of empowerment and hope can heal ailments and extend life span? Interesting.