STRESS
AND HEALTH
You know the situation. You get ten hours of sleep TOTAL the week of finals. You arenÕt quite sure how your brain is remembering to send "breath" signals to your lungs because you have crammed so much information in there; information that you are certain youÕll never need again. Then it happens, the runny nose and sore throatÉ.Here we goÉ. The research points out, again and again, that being stressed suppresses the functioning of your immune system and you get sick. The famous Common Cold Study, done by Cohen, Tyrell, & Smith, (1991) showed that after being injected with the common cold virus, those students reporting the most stress in their lives were the most likely to get sick, indicating a positive correlation between life stress and cold symptoms. They concluded that stress affects oneÕs vulnerability to illness. (Friedman lecture, 2001). But do you know WHY?
To get into the exact specifics of the biological events and physiological reasoning would put both of us to sleep, and so you may want to look elsewhere for a more scientific explanation. Yet the general idea will be summarized here so that you can see yet another reason why it is not good to become run-down, to procrastinate, and not to deal with stress when it is hovering over you.
Re-ordering of the system: When the body perceives itself to be under stress, some components of our internal host defense system are compromised so that our body can "best protect itself". Our immune system exists within our bodies in the lymph nodes, blood, spleen, and bone marrow and therefore, not on the periphery. Yet when under stress, the body reorders the immune system to prepare to fight the incoming stressor (even when it is psychological) and thus put "extra forces" in the mucosol membranes in places where infection can possibly get in. Therefore, this enhanced immunity at the skin results in reduced immunity within the body and thus antigens coming in other ways (airway for example) are not fought off as quickly. Ever gotten a cold sore when you were stressed? This is for the same reason. The cold sore herpes virus remains latent when they are kept in check by the internal immune system. Yet when all the cells have been sent to the skin, the virus remains unchecked and reactivates. (Friedman lecture, 2-26-2001) So there you go! That explains THAT mystery!