ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 16, 1996 TAG: 9611180041
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
THE ``FIGHT OR FLIGHT'' reflex sends out emergency hormones. If it happens on a daily basis, these hormones can cause health problems.
Stress and depression that send emergency hormones flowing into the bloodstream may help cause brittle bones in women, infections and even cancer, researchers say.
A natural ``fight or flight'' reflex that gave ancient human beings the speed and endurance to escape primitive dangers is triggered daily in many modern people, keeping their hormones at constant hyper-readiness, experts say. Even some forms of depression bring on a similar hormonal state.
``In many people these hormones, such as cortisol, turn on and stay on for a long time,'' Dr. Philip Gold of the National Institute of Mental Health said Friday. ``If you are in danger, cortisol is good for you. But if it becomes unregulated, it can produce disease.''
In extreme cases, this hormonal state destroys appetite, cripples the immune system, shuts down processes that repair tissue, blocks sleep and even breaks down bone, Gold said.
He was among the speakers at a two-day conference of the International Society for Neuroimmunomodulation, a group of experts who study the effects of stress and depression on physical disease.
Gold presented a study of bone density among 26 women, half suffering from depression and half with a normal emotional state. The depressed women had high levels of stress hormones, he said.
Although all the women were age 40, he said, those with depression uniformly ``had bone density like that of 70-year-old women. They were clearly at risk of fractures. The magnitude of bone loss was surprising.''
A study at Ohio State University showed that routine marital disagreements can cause the ``fight or flight'' hormone reaction.
Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, a psychologist, said a study of 90 newlywed couples showed that marriage arguments were particularly damaging to women.
In the study, the couples were put into a room together with blood sampling needles in their arms. The blood samples could be taken at intervals without the subjects knowing it.
A researcher then interviewed the couples and intentionally prompted a discussion that aroused disagreement and argument.
``The couples were at a point in their marriage when they should be getting along well, when there should be little hostility,'' Kiecolt-Glaser said.
Yet samples taken during the disagreements showed that the women experienced sudden and high levels of stress hormones, just as if they were in a ``fight or flight'' situation of great danger. The women also had steeper increases than the men.
The test continued through an overnight hospital stay, and more blood samples were taken just before discharge. For the men, the blood hormone levels were back to normal, but the women still had high levels.
``The stress hormone levels showed that the women were much more sensitive to negative behavior than were the men,'' Kiecolt-Glaser said.
People with such high levels of stress hormones are at a much greater risk of getting sick, said Dr. Ronald Glaser, an Ohio State virologist and the husband of Kiecolt-Glaser.
``If the hormone levels stay up longer than they should, there is a real risk of infectious disease,'' he said.
Glaser tested the effects of stress on the immune system by giving hepatitis vaccine shots to 48 students, including 23 medical students in the midst of final examinations. Blood tests showed the medical students had high levels of stress hormones.
Normally, a vaccination will cause the immune system to develop antibodies and white blood cells that will protect against a disease.
A month later, the students returned for booster shots and their blood again was tested. Glaser said those who had been under stress developed the least protection against hepatitis.
``The antibody levels were lowest among the medical students,'' said Glaser. Even six months later, he said, the higher stressed students still had the lowest level of disease protection.
Another study conducted with elderly people - at an average age of 68 - produced similar results.
Glaser said that people with weak immune systems caused by high stress hormone levels also are more likely to become infected with viruses that are linked to cancer. Viral infections, for instance, are thought to cause liver cancer, leukemia and some forms of skin cancer.
LENGTH: Medium: 84 linesby CNB