Stress is a natural defense mechanism of the body that prepares us to fight or flee when we face dangerous situations, however, when it is sustained for too long or is experienced too often it can have devastating consequences for physical or mental health, and a A new study confirms this, since it has proven that the chronic stress that we accumulate throughout life causes wear and tear on the body that can increase the risk of dying from cancer.
That wear and tear is known as allostatic load and is a biological measure of the cumulative effects of stress. “In response to external stressors, your body releases a stress hormone called cortisol, and then once the stress is over, these levels should go back down,” said Dr. Justin Xavier Moore, an epidemiologist at the Medical College of Georgia and Georgia Cancer Center. “However, if you have ongoing, chronic psychosocial stressors that never allow you to ‘come down,’ that can take a toll on your body at a biological level.”
Researchers at the Medical College of Georgia led by Dr. Moore, who analyzed data from more than 41,000 people collected in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) collected between 1988 and 2019. Participant data included: body mass index (BMI), systolic and diastolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, hemoglobin A1C (elevated levels indicate diabetes risk), albumin and creatinine (which measure kidney function), and C-reactive protein (a measure of inflammation), which used to determine allostatic load.
Factors Influencing Stress Load
Individuals with a score of more than 3 were defined as having a high allostatic load, and the researchers found that they were 2.4 times more likely to die from cancer than those with a low allostatic load, a risk that was maintained after adjusting for other factors that could influence it such as age, race, gender, economic level or education. “But you have to adjust for confounding factors,” Moore explained, because “we know there are differences in allostatic loads by age, race, and gender.” “If you are born into an environment where your opportunities are very different from those of your white male counterparts, for example, being a black woman, your life trajectory involves dealing with more adversity”, affirms this expert.
Individuals with a high allostatic load (a measure of the effects of cumulative stress) were 2.4 times more likely to die of cancer
In previous research, this team of scientists had observed that when evaluating trends in allostatic load over 30 years among 50,671 people, those aged 40 years or older had a greater than 100% risk of having an elevated allostatic load compared to younger adults. 30 years old.
Even accounting for age, the researchers found that people with a high allostatic load still had a 28% increased risk of dying from cancer. “That means if you had two people the same age, if one of those people had a high allostatic load, you’re 28% more likely to die from cancer,” Moore said.
Adjusting for sociodemographic factors, including gender, race, and education, high allostatic load caused a 21% increase; and when the model was adjusted for other risk factors, such as smoking, having had a previous heart attack, or having previously been diagnosed with cancer or congestive heart failure, it led to a 14% increase. The results of the study have been published in ScienceDirect.
“The bottom line is that the environments in which we live, work and play, where you are rewarded for working harder and sometimes seen as weak for taking time for yourself, lead to high stress, which in turn can lead to development of cancer and increased morbidity and mortality”.
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