Chronic Stress Increases the Risk of Cancer Death

Chronic stress can make it difficult to function, so you might be among the third of adults in America who report feeling this way. feeling extreme stress consistently. Sure, we all experience some form of stress in our daily lives, but chronic stress—the kind that involves a consistent sense of feeling pressured and overwhelmed over a long period—can wreak havoc on your body and mind.

According to the American Institute of Stress, each day there is an estimated one million people in the U.S. Stress can cause you to miss work, and approximately 75 percent of Americans believe that chronic stress can negatively impact your mental and physical health.

In a study published in SSM Population Health In September 2022, researchers at the Medical College of Georgia discovered that chronic stress can increase your risk of developing cancer. fatal cancer soar. Learn how to reduce stress and preserve your long-term health.

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Stress can not only affect your mental well-being but it can also cause physical symptoms if you don’t manage it properly. This phenomenon is known as allostatic load—the “wear and tear” You can have a lifetime of stress on your mental and physical health.

“As a response to external stressors, your body releases a stress hormone called cortisol, and then once the stress is over, these levels should go back down,” Justin Xavier MooreDr. Phyllis H. Smith, PhD, MPH is the lead researcher at Georgia Cancer Center and Medical College of Georgia. in a statement. “However, if you have chronic, ongoing psychosocial stressors that never allow you to ‘come down,’ then that can cause wear and tear on your body at a biological level.”

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Moore and his research group looked at data from more than 41,000 people in the study. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) Between 1988 and 2019, collected. The database contains biomarkers that can indicate health status. These include body mass index (BMI), blood sugar, cholesterol, hemoglobin (a measure of diabetes risk), hemoglobin (a measure of diabetic risk), albumin (measures kidney function) and C-reactive proteins (an inflammation marker). This data was collected between 1988 and 2019. The researchers used this information to determine the participants’ allostatic loads, or “wear and tear” Stress can lead to chronic fatigue.

The highest allostatic load was defined as someone with a score greater than 3. This data was then compared to the participants in the experiment. National Death Index To determine the number of people who died from cancer and how long ago they did so. Their findings indicated that participants with a high load were 2.4 times more likely to die from cancer than those with a low one—even after adjusting for age, gender, race, and social demographic.

Researchers found that fatalities were still higher for those with a higher allostatic burden, regardless of race, gender, or sex. cancer risk. After controlling for age, people with higher allostatic loads had a 28 percent greater chance of dying from cancer. Adjusting for gender, race, and education level revealed a 21 percent rise in the chance of dying from cancer. The researchers found no correlation between race and death from cancer.

“The reason race even matters is because there are systemic factors that disproportionately affect people of color,” Moore. “But even if you take race out, the bottom line is that the environments in which we live, work, and play, where you are rewarded for working more and sometimes seen as weak for taking time for yourself, is conducive to high stress which in turn may lead to cancer development and increased morbidity and mortality.”

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These findings are timely considering that cancer is a growing problem. second-leading cause of death In America, this disease was responsible for more than 600,000 deaths in the last year. This devastating disease has affected nearly everyone, directly or indirectly. That’s why it’s crucial to find healthy ways to manage stress and prevent the wear and tear of chronic stress from wreaking havoc on your health—and potentially your life.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has some great ways to do this, effectively manage stress You can reduce your risk of developing fatal cancer by eating healthy food, exercising regularly, getting enough rest, deep breathing techniques, mindfulness meditation, and eating a healthy diet.