Penn State
Reacting positively to
stressful situations may play a key role in long-term health, according to
researchers.
In a study measuring adults'
reactions to stress and how it affects their bodies, researchers found that
adults who fail to maintain positive moods such as cheerfulness or calm when
faced with the minor stressors of everyday life appear to have elevated levels
of inflammation. Furthermore, women can be at heightened risk.
Inflammatory responses are part
of the body's ability to protect itself via the immune system. However, chronic
-- long-term -- inflammation can undermine health, and appears to play a role
in obesity, heart disease and cancer.
These findings add to growing body
of evidence regarding the health implications of affective reactivity --
emotional response -- to daily stressors. The researchers report their results
in a recent edition of Health Psychology.
Nancy Sin, postdoctoral fellow
in the Center for Healthy Aging and Department of Biobehavioral Health, Penn
State and her colleagues showed that the frequency of daily stressors, in and
of itself, was less consequential for inflammation than how an individual
reacted to those stressors.
"A person's frequency of stress
may be less related to inflammation than responses to stress," said Sin.
"It is how a person reacts to stress that is important."
Sin's findings also highlight
the important -- but often discounted -- contributions of positive affect in
naturalistic stress processes.
"Positive emotions, and
how they can help people in the event of stress, have really been
overlooked," Sin said.
In the short-term, with illness
or exercise, the body experiences a high immune response to help repair itself.
However, in the long term, heightened inflammatory immune responses may not be
healthy. Individuals who have trouble regulating their responses may be at risk
for certain age-related conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, frailty and
cognitive decline, Sin said.
"To our knowledge, this
paper is the first to link biomarkers of inflammation with positive mood
responses to stressors in everyday life," said Jennifer E.
Graham-Engeland, associate professor of biobehavioral health, Penn State.
A cross-sectional sample of 872
adults from the National Study of Daily Experiences reported daily stressors
and emotional reactions for eight consecutive days. Blood samples of
participants were obtained during a separate clinic visit and assayed for
inflammatory markers.
Subjects were interviewed by
phone every day for eight consecutive days. They were asked to rate their
positive and negative emotions, as well as whether or not they encountered
stressors. This enabled researchers to evaluate a person's emotional response
on days when they experience stressors, and compare it to days when they do
not.
"We calculated reactivity
scores to see how participants generally reacted to stressors," Sin said.
"Then we used it to predict two markers of inflammation."
The researchers used several
different types of stressors, among them were arguments and avoiding arguments
at work, school or home; being discriminated against; a network stressor, i.e.,
a stressful event that happens to someone close to the subject; and other
stressors.
"We examined both positive
and negative affective reactions to stress and compared the effects of stress
exposure with responses to stressors," Graham-Engeland said. "Little
is known about the potential role of daily stress processes on inflammation. Much
of the relevant past research with humans has focused on either chronic stress
or acute laboratory-based stress -- methods that do not fully capture how
people respond to naturalistic stressors in the context of daily life."
Data came from the second wave
of the Midlife in the United States Study, a national survey designed to
investigate health and well-being in midlife and older adulthood. Its goal is
to expand understanding of how daily mood and stressful events may relate to
inflammation and health.
________________________________________
Story Source:
The above story is based on
materials provided by Penn State. The original article was written by Marjorie
S. Miller. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
On
Travel
I
am not much an advocate for traveling and I observe that men run away to other
countries because they are not good in their own and run back to their own
because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part Only the light
characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?
Traveling
is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of
places.
Travel
is a fool’s paradise.
Though
we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us or we
find it not.
No
man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits.
Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous.
As Befits a Man
BY LANGSTON HUGHES
I don't mind dying —
But I'd hate to die all
alone!
I want a dozen pretty
women
To holler, cry, and
moan.
I don't mind dying
But I want my funeral to
be fine:
A row of long tall mamas
Fainting, Fanning, and
crying.
I want a fish-tail
hearse
And sixteen fish-tail
cars,
A big brass band
And a whole truck load
of flowers.
When they let me down,
Down into the clay,
I want the women to
holler:
Please don't take him
away!
Ow-ooo-oo-o!
Don't take daddy away!
“Nothing, not love, not greed,
not passion or hatred, is stronger than a writer’s need to change another
writer’s copy.”Arthur Evans
“It’s
so beautiful at this hour. The sun is low, the shadows are long, the air is
cold and clean. You won’t be awake for another five hours, but I can’t help
feeling that we’re sharing this clear and beautiful morning.” Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and
Incredibly Close
“Don’t
seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand—relax. If you relax,
it comes. If you relax, it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with
it.” Osho
In time we hate that which we often fear.”William
Shakespeare
“Love has no other desire but
to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to
the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day
of loving” Kahlil Gibran
“It is wonderful how much time
good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount
of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of
ennui.”Helen Keller
Mala
fide:
In bad faith.From Latin mala fide, from malus (bad) + fides (faith). Earliest
documented use: 1561.
“Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.”
THE BOOK OF FUNNY, ODD AND INTERESTING THINGS THAT PEOPLE
SAY
Animal Excuses
My
cat unplugged my alarm clock.
A
buffalo escaped from the game reserve and kept charging the employee every time
she tried to go to
her
car from her house.
A
skunk got into the employee's house and sprayed all of his uniforms.
"My
cow bit me."
"I
tripped over my dog and was knocked unconscious."
I
totaled my wife's jeep in a collision with a cow.
I
hit my arm against the hopper, and got flea bites.
This
is for the cut on my hand, but I took the stitches out myself. However, I am
filing on account of the watchdog biting me and on account of a hurt I got in a
fall in the paint shop.
"My
boyfriend's snake got loose and I'm afraid to leave the bedroom until he gets
home."
My
monkey died.
