A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an
audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "how heavy is this glass of
water?" Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.
The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight
doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it."
"If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem.
If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm.
If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it's the
same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."
He continued, "And that's the way it is with
stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the
burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on."
"As with the glass of water, you have to put it
down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can
carry on with the burden."
"So, before you return home tonight, put the
burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow.
Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down
for a moment if you can."
"Relax; pick them up later after you've rested.
Life is short. Enjoy it!"
And then he shared some ways of dealing with the
burdens of life:
- Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some
days you're the statue.
- Always keep your words soft and sweet, just
in case you have to eat them.
- Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can
be recalled by their maker.
- If you can't be kind, at least have the
decency to be vague.
- If you lend someone $20 and never see that person
again, it was probably worth it
- Never buy a car you can't push.
- Never put both feet in your mouth at the same
time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.
- Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just
get up and dance.
- The second mouse gets the cheese.
- When everything's coming your way, you're in the
wrong lane.
- Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the
longer you live.
- You may be the only one person in the world, but
you may also be the world to one person
- Some mistakes are too much fun to only make
once.
- We could learn a lot from crayons. Some are
sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are
different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
- A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the
scenery on a detour.
The premise driving the theory is that stress has been found to weaken the
body's immune response and cause some physiological changes, such as the
secretion of certain hormones, that could contribute to the development of
cancer.
Traditionally, much of the study in this field has focused on the effects of
stress on the immune system.
But now, attention is shifting to the relationship between stress and gene
function, an area many scientists believe is the key to unravelling this
mystery.
Scientists have discovered that high-stress situations can cause certain
genes to become activated while others, such as those responsible for
suppressing the growth of tumours, may be turned off, changes that could have
serious implications in the development of cancer. But a major challenge is
understanding how this complex genetic relationship works and what causes
changes to occur.
This research is part of epigenetics, a promising field of science that
focuses on how certain factors can cause genes to be turned on or off.
New clues in this complicated puzzle emerged this week when researchers
revealed a study that showed mice living in stressful conditions developed much
larger cancerous tumours than those living in relatively stable conditions.
In the study, published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, scientists
used a group of female mice predisposed to developing mammary gland cancer to
study the possible role played by stress. They put some of the mice in social
isolation, keeping them alone in cages shortly after they were weaned from their
mothers, while other mice were caged in groups. For mice, social animals that
usually live in groups of three or four in the wild, isolation can trigger a
significant amount of stress.
Researchers, led by Suzanne Conzen, associate professor of medicine in the
Ben May Department for Cancer Research at the University of Chicago, found that
the mice kept in isolation developed more cancer and had larger tumours than the
mice that lived in groups.
They also found that socially isolated mice behaved differently than mice
kept in groups, becoming less exploratory, and released significantly more
cortisol, often referred to as the “stress hormone” because it is secreted
in response to agitation or anxiety. Cortisol can also alter the body's genetic
pathways and disrupt the ability of genes that suppress tumour growth to
function properly.
The study provides some of the strongest evidence to date that an
individual's stress level may be linked to the progression of cancer. But the
quest to understand why – and, perhaps more importantly, how those factors
might be used to help prevent or treat cancer – is still in its infancy.
Part of the reason is that the scientific community has yet to reach
consensus on whether an individual's mental state has a real, measurable impact
on susceptibility to developing cancer or the ability to fight it off. While
some research has shown that cancer patients who receive extensive therapy and
support live longer than those who don't, other studies have been inconclusive
or shown no difference. in outcomes between patients who were anxious or unhappy
and those who weren't. In fact, a study published last month in the journal
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity found that short-term stress stopped the
development of cancer in mice.
“This is an area that has a long way to go in terms of understanding how
these factors play out in humans,” said Caryn Lerman, a professor of
psychiatry and scientific director of the Abramson Cancer Center at the
University of Pennsylvania.
Confounding the issue further is that people respond to stress in different
ways and have varying thresholds for coping with difficult situations. As a
result, the potential ability of stress to affect the development or progression
of cancer may change person to person, making it that much more challenging to
understand.
Instead of framing the discussion around cause and effect, one scientist who
has studied this area for years said it's more accurate to think of the
relationship between stress and cancer as one of potential risk.
“Stress doesn't give you cancer, but it is a risk factor like genetic
differences, like environmental carcinogens,” said David Spiegel, associate
chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford
University School of Medicine. “There are a whole bunch of risk factors. Not
everybody that smokes tobacco gets lung cancer.
- 2009 October 1 GLOBE
& MAIL
