How Stress Damages the Immune System

A new study published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity helps to shed some light on the long-recognized fact that chronic stress damages immune functioning. Researchers at UCLA found a direct effect on immune cells by the stress hormone cortisol.

When you experience stressful situations, your body releases cortisol to activate the "fight or flight" response. This hormone has a variety of effects on different parts of the body, and one of these is to suppress the ability of immune cells to activate an enzyme that allows them to stay young and healthy and to keep dividing into new immune cells. The actions of this enzyme are known to prevent diseases ranging from HIV to heart disease as well as normal aging.

The finding that cortisol directly inhibits the action of this enzyme tells us a good deal about exactly how stress promotes disease and decreases the body's ability to defend itself against pathogens. It may also help us to understand how difficult lives seem to "age" people.

The next step for scientific research is to find out what can be done to inhibit this effect of cortisol, so that immune functioning and age-prevention functions could continue in the face of situational and biological stress. Such a drug could be invaluable for long-term military applications, other chronically high-stress workers such as air traffic controllers, and possibly even for people prone to high levels of anxiety that are known to compromise immune functioning.

It is already known that regular exercise can mediate the effects of ordinary stress levels, so you may want to think about finally buying that wii exercise game in order to keep yourself free from degenerative disease.