Thursday, March 21, 2013

Psychoneuroimmunology

Say that three times fast!  I hope to learn a new word every day, and this one dropped into my lap during a meeting.

And little did I know that the Ohio State University is at the heart of this science.  There Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and Dr. Ronald Glaser:

[h]ave demonstrated important health consequences of stress, including slower wound healing and impaired vaccine responses; they have also shown that chronic stress substantially accelerates age-related changes in inflammation which is linked to some cancers, cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis, and frailty and function decline.  In addition, their programmatic work has focused on how personal relationships influence immune and endocrine function, and health.

Most interesting to me is the evidence they have found "that the effects of chronic stress can be seen both at the genetic and molecular level in chronic caregivers' bodies."

I suppose this suggests that caregivers need to take really good care of themselves as well as their loved ones. Something to keep in mind.

1 comment:

  1. Thank God I did my jogging on a stressless hide-a-bed instead of a high stress roadside like all those 2% body fat, control-freaks and their repeated stresses. Thus, my telomeres are assured of just the right length and tension, despite my decades of psychoneuroimmunologic stress.

    Does anyone ever consider that all this stuff goes on in a gel (cytoplasm)? We don't have the slightest idea (at least when I was in learning this stuff) what gel kinetics, trans-membrane pressure gradients, and other fundamental intracellular properties may impact on these remarkable observations. Counting lymphocytes is akin to Early Man chucking a rock at a Mastodon and defining the laws of Gravity.

    And to think, once upon a time I tried to believe that it was all true. It had to be. Scientists were concluding it, after all.

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