How stress can make you age
Published: Thursday, December 02, 2004
Some stressful events seem to turn a person's hair gray overnight. Now a team of researchers has found that severe emotional distress - like that caused by divorce, the loss of a job, or caring for an ill child or parent - may speed up the aging of the body's cells at the genetic level. The findings are the first to link psychological stress so directly to biological age.
The researchers found that blood cells from women who had spent many years caring for a disabled child were, genetically, about a decade older than those from peers who had much less caretaking experience. The study, which appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also suggests that the perception of being stressed can add years to a person's biological age.
Though doctors have linked chronic psychological stress to weakened immune function and an increased risk of catching colds, among other things, they are still trying to understand how tension damages or weakens tissue. The new research suggests a new way that such damage may occur and opens the possibility that the process can be reversed.
For the complete article on the International Herald Tribune click here.