stress

“Stress relievers” that typically come to mind in reference to college life include partying hard, engaging in fraternity shenanigans, and ordering pizza. Add pet ownership to that list. A new study out of Ohio State University found that pets-- not beer-- are help college students to get through difficult times.

In the August 15th issue of the Journal of Biological Psychiatry, Gregory Miller, PhD, and his colleagues released the results of a preliminary study in which they found that stress impacts the body at the genetic level. While studies around stress have previously focused on levels of cortisol— frequently referred to in Pop-psychology parlance as the "stress hormone"— and the impact of stress on those levels' patterns, Miller and his colleagues found in their subjects that it is the body's ability to receive the signal from this hormone, even as it exists in some stressed subjects at normal levels, that is altered under stressful conditions. Miller's team noted the differences in patterns of gene expression in the blood's monocytes-- white blood cells impacting physical immune response-- between subjects serving as caretakers for family members battling cancer and a comparable group of subjects not coping with an enduring stressor of this kind. The genetic patterns in the caregivers' monocytes impaired their bodies' responses to cortisol's anti-inflammatory properties. The caregivers' "chronic pro-inflammatory state… could contribute to the risk for a number of medical illnesses, such as depression, heart disease, and diabetes."

Like a flock of chickens hunting grubs and seeds, humans appear to be hardwired to follow a social pecking order. Researchers at the National Institute of Menal Health conducted an experiment in which subjects played a computer game for money. They were told they were competing simultaneously against others whom they couldn't see and were assigned a rank based on their playing skill.

Youre a ball of anxiety: head pounding, jaw clenched. And you could feel worse down the line, since on-going stress can wreak havoc on your health. But new devices help you stop tension by picking up on early warning signs. They precisely monitor a bevy of biological stats, wirelessly deliver the data to your computer or phone in real time, and guide you in calming exercises that help you chill out instead of losing your cool.

Clinical psychologist Alain Brunet of McGill University in Montreal doesn´t usually torture his patients. But lately he has been pressing those with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, to relive emotionally scarring incidents. For some it´s rape, others battlefield trauma. When his patients get particularly upset-crying, shaking, blood pressure rising-he gives them a 25-year-old hypertension drug called propranolol. The idea, though, is not to lower their blood pressure.