Una paloma blanca
https://youtu.be/gUCxVL45C3g
Columbus,
Americas, Natives
Grammar
rules
Let’s talk about stress
and your cells
This Sunday night
I’m thinking about stress. According to the Stress in America survey from the American Psychological
Association, released in May, this year marks the first significant increase
in reported stress since the survey began in 2007. On a 10-point scale, the
average stress level is 5.9. For parents with children younger than 18, it’s
6.7.
While there’s been
considerable improvement in the perception of mental health in the
United States, there’s still a disconnect. A lot of people think that stress
is an emotional experience, but it’s a physical one, too. According to a 2019
survey, 55 percent of respondents stated they felt
“mental illnesses are different than serious physical illness.”
A growing body of
research blurs the need to separate emotional states from physical ones. An
increased understanding of how states like stress physically affect the body
can eventually lead to better mental health treatments.
Mental health is
health — scientists know this by looking at our cells.
Take mitochondria, the organelles considered the power
generators of the cell. They convert oxygen and nutrients into a chemical
energy fuel called adenosine triphosphate.
An emerging concept
is that mitochondria may be an intersection point between psychosocial
experiences and biological stress response. In a 2018 review of 23 animal studies, researchers found
that acute and chronic stress influenced how well mitochondria could
function, especially in the brain. This altered state, the authors say, could explain why psychological stress
translates into physical health effects.
Patients with
psychiatric disorders are more likely than the general population to be
affected by ailments like somatic, metabolic, and cardiovascular diseases,
says Kristoffer Månsson, a clinical psychologist and primary
investigator at the Karolinska Institute. Crucially, they also have higher
rates of mortality.
Månsson’s research
examines the why of this problem. One reason, he tells me, is that there
could “be a biological underpinning that we need to understand.”
In 2019, Månsson and
colleagues published a paper specifically examining how mood and anxiety
disorders affect telomeres. These are short sequences of DNA that cap
the end of chromosomes and protect cells. Telomere length can affect the pace
of aging and onset of age-associated diseases. They become shorter each time a cell copies itself.
The passing of time
means that telomeres shorten naturally, but experts believe other factors
might influence this process as well. A paper published in 2004 found that stressed women
had shorter telomeres than healthy controls. This was one of the first
studies that suggested there might be a link between stress and telomere
length, Månsson explains.
Månsson and his team
strengthened this link with their finding that cognitive behavioral therapy
(CBT) for patients with social anxiety both reduced anxiety levels and
seemingly protected them against cellular aging. They evaluated 46 people
diagnosed with social anxiety disorder who received nine weeks of online CBT
treatment.
When they analyzed
blood samples, the team found that compared to samples taken before the CBT
program started, the participants had both lower levels of anxiety and
increased telomerase and glutathione peroxidase activity. These are the
enzymes that protect telomeres.
While the study
period wasn’t long enough to see if telomere length changed, this effect on
the enzymes indicates that CBT therapy can protect one from cellular aging.
Månsson says this
result speaks to the dynamic nature of our biology and can eventually
translate into better mental health care.
“Psychiatric
treatment, including CBT and psychopharmacology, needs to be improved because
many patients do not respond sufficiently to current treatments,” Månsson
explains.
Understanding our
rapidly changing biology throughout treatment, he says, could help us figure
out why that is and lead to the eventual design of novel and effective
treatments.
