I’ve believed for as long as I can remember – because I’ve been given the explanation for that long – that stress causes health problems, and was directly tied to heart disease and ulcers. In fact, I once read a Reader’s Digest article that tracked exactly how a life of constanst stress keeps the digestive tract from working properly by pumping blood away from internal organs to constantly feed the brain (conflict and problem resolution) and limbs (fight-or-flight reflex). This is hardest, the article said, on the stomach, which can’t mix the excess acid pumped into it with the food, resulting over time in ulcers. I didn’t go to medical school, so I have no idea how much of this is true, but it sounds logical to the untrained brain.
Now, I’m told, a virus causes ulcers, and this article in Slate.com goes so far as to say there’s no connection between state-of-mind and state-of-body. It specifically mentions stress-induced illness as being pretty much mythical. Any medical types out there with a take on this?
The article does not say that. It states that there are very many examples of where the mind-body connection has been overhyped. Which is certainly true.
It’s also probably true that there is a very significant link between mental state and health-outcomes in some types of illnesses. I’ll elaborate more later, but to categorically state that this is no, “mind-body,” link is false and that is not what the article claims.
H. pylori is a bacterium which triggers ulcers. I haven’t heard anything about a virus that causes them, did I miss something?
I think state of mind and state of body are related, but not in the way you mean. The mind after all is a part of the body, not a separate entity. That people cannot reliably think themselves cancer free doesn’t mean that the connection is mythical.
It’s possible that the connection between heart disease and cancer and other such illnesses and stress is overblown; I don’t know. I can tell you, however, from unpleasant personal experience, that stress can cause more immediate and evident health problems, like hives and lightheadedness/fainting.
I think the connection can be way overblown sometimes… there is an article in this month’s Discover on a very large longitudinal study which determined a person’s mental health has little impact on their ability to survive cancer.
But that is not to say there is no connection whatsoever. Many symptoms of psychological disorders are physical reactions such as stomach pain, nausea, racing heart, dizziness, etc. Really the greatest problem with stating there is ‘‘no connection’’ is that it ignores the fact that the brain is in fact a physical entity and ethereal sounding things like ‘‘emotional state,’’ ‘‘consciousness,’’ and ‘‘mental health’’ are in fact referring to physical realities of the brain. We have a limited understanding of these physical realities because the brain is so darn complex–but they are physical nonetheless.
I think the article really speaks to the fact that you can’t just “think yourself better” by using positive thoughts and anti-stress tactics - that, essentially, stress levels do not affect a patient’s ability to get better once they’ve actually gotten sick with cancer or been diagnosed with heart disease.
When it comes to physical illnesses, that’s probably true, though I think they’d have to make an exception for auto-immune disorders. My MIL’s Crohns always flares up when she’s under heavy stress, as does a friend’s MS - as long as they keep their lives as stress-free as possible, their disease tends to stay at bay (or at the very least, flare up less frequently and with less severity).
Same goes for mental illness. I was diagnosed with depression several years ago, and I can assure you that the only thing that stands between me and a lifetime of medication is cognitive therapy, which is quite literally a form of thinking myself better. Since stress is also a major trigger for my depression, my best bet for staying healthy is to avoid it as much as possible.
The joy of any medical study is that there’s always someone willing to jump on the conclusion and quickly extrapolate it to mean something entirely different. :rolleyes:
Board ate my reply. Again: You’re probably missing an aspect of the article. Many disorders (e.g., asthma, diabetes, hypertension) are well-described in empirical studies as responsive to stress and stress reduction. You may not be able to think away cancer. However, there are good studies showing improved quality of life if not longevity for stress reduction techniques and some cancers.
Did you ever go back and read someting you’d posted – something you’d researched and re-written a couple of times – and then asked yourself, “Did I write that?”
No, the Slate article doesn’t say “there’s no connection between state-of-mind and state of body.” Nice turn of phrase, dumbass, but that’s not what the article says. :smack: It does, however, pretty much debunk the notion that there’s a direct causal link between the mind and ailments: “Better science has undermined the notion that stress causes ulcers …” (Thanks for the correction, Marienee, but to some of us a bug is a bug is a bug.)
My biggest problem with this isn’t that science has poofed a lot of crappy old wives’ tales, but that some long-held health beliefs, which we assumed were based on solid science, are now toppling over. I don’t mean that Type A personalities have more heart attacks – what’s stress to one person may not be stress ot another – but the extrapolation (hinted at but not said?) that stress doesn’t cause heart problems. Maybe that’s a reach I’m making in my own mind.
My mother in law was in the hospital for a TIA. Basically a “mini-stroke” She has a significant narrowing on one of her cerebral arteries (most of us will as we age). Stress doesn’t play a role in narrowing those artieries (diet, genetics, smoking, etc., do), but stress takes a role in her blood pressure, which impacts whether that narrowing causes a stroke or not.
IANAD, but I can offer two opinions from people who would seem well-placed to comment.
A friend of mine was talking to a woman who had worked for a very long time, 20 years or something, as a counsellor and therapist, working almost exclusively with women with breast cancer. My friend asked her a question along these lines: ‘We all know this is a complex issues, and there are probably many factors that influence whether or not a given woman suffers breast cancer, including genetic, lifestyle and environmental factors. However, based on your own experence, what do you think is the single most important factor involved?’. This very experienced therapist said, ‘I don’t even have to think about this. Straight away, I would say it’s stress.’
I told this story to a woman I met who had worked for a very long time as a General Practitioner or family doctor. She heartily concurred. She felt that diet and a person’s diet/exercise regime was obviously very important and a major health factor, but she agreed that ‘stress’ reigned over all. As she put it, if you’re stressed out for a significant period of time, you don’t even give yourself the chance to be healthy, even if you’re a gym bunny eating all the right foods. Trying to reduce or eliminate stress factors is always a great first step on the road to sustained health, because at least then you get the chance to be healthy. After that, it’s back to the usual stuff: diet, exercise, hydration, sleep, balanced lifestyle, good hygiene, trying not to handle raw plutonium or bathe in cholera swamps.
Personally, I’ve been interested in this subject for many years, as it relates to my own prevailing interests in the mind, beliefs and communication. I would say it seems clear to me, based on personal observations over many years, that the elimination of stress is a massively important factor in terms of either achieving or maintaining good health. However, I’m well aware that ‘it seems clear to me’ doesn’t carry much weight and is no substitute for good evidence and well-qualified sources.
Normally I would let something like this pass (if you’re happy in your ignorance and it doesn’t affect me, knock yourself out), but this particular piece of ignorance is affecting us all. A virus is not a bacterium; you don’t treat them the same medically and you don’t discover their harmful presence in the body the same way (bacteria can be easily cultured and identified in a matter of days; viruses take a lot more specialized equipment to culture and identify). The medical community, prompted by their patients, has created what might still be a very bad situation with treating virus infections like bacterial infections (creating methicillin resistent Staph. aureus - MRSA) with antibiotics, which are useless against viruses. Most colds and flus are caused by viruses; strep throat or other bacterial infections are fairly rare.
Okay, microbiology lecture over.
Maybe the idea from the article in question is just that stress isn’t as bad as we’ve been led to believe. I know from my own life that I enjoy life a whole lot more, and my stomach hurts a whole lot less, when I’m not feeling stretched to the limit. I agree that my personal experience isn’t a substitute for a scientific study, but you get enough people saying exactly the same thing, and I think you would be well advised to listen to them. Sometimes enough anecdotes ARE data.
Are there solid definitions for “stress”, “stress factors” etc.? Always seems to me that it’s too vague a term for it to be possible to answer questions such as the OP’s.
