Stress Archive

People who identify as bisexual represent a substantial part of the population, yet research focusing on their health lags. Which health problems are more likely to occur in people who are bisexual and what might help to counter them?

Research we're watching

Can emotional stress harm your bones? A new study found an association between stressful social relationships and bone problems in women. The study, which was published online July 9 by the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, found that women who reported high levels of social stress had lower bone density six years later. The study looked at more than 11,000 postmenopausal women. At the time of enrollment, the women filled out a questionnaire that asked them to rate their social stress levels and had their bone density measured both at enrollment and six years later at a follow-up appointment. Women who had reported high levels of stress at the initial interview showed a bigger decline in bone density at the follow-up compared with women who'd initially reported lower stress levels. This was true even after the researchers adjusted for other factors that may affect bone health, such as age, weight, smoking, alcohol use, and education, among others. The authors speculated that stress may harm bone health because stress leads to higher blood cortisol levels, a well-established reason for lower bone density. Further study is needed to understand and confirm the results.

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Study shows an association between a strong sense of purpose in life and a lower risk of death from cardiovascular problems and blood conditions.

If you believe your life has meaning, it could potentially be longer, says a new study published online May 24 by JAMA Network Open.

Study authors found that among a group of nearly 7,000 adults over age 50, those who scored highest on a scale that measured "life purpose" were less likely to die during the study period, and also less likely to die during the same period from heart, circulatory, or blood conditions, compared with those who scored lower.

Lifestyle changes may not always be enough to control biologically driven body changes.

You spend hours in the gym every day. You eat nothing but grilled chicken, fish, and salads. Yet the numbers on the scale don't budge — or worse, they slowly creep up, along with your waist measurement.

Welcome to menopause.

"The change" actually does bring changes for many women, including weight gain that can resist even the most diligent efforts to reverse it, says Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School.

In the journals

Spending just 20 minutes connecting with nature can help lower stress hormone levels, according to a study in the April 4, 2019, Frontiers in Psychology. Previous research has shown that interacting with nature reduces stress, but it is not clear how long and how often the engagement needs to be, or even what kind of nature experience is best.

Here, researchers asked 36 people to spend 10 minutes or longer, three days a week for eight weeks, in an outdoor place where they could interact with nature. The settings varied from yards to public parks to green areas near their place of work. They also either walked or sat during their nature time.

Ask the doctor

Q. What causes high blood pressure?

A. My answer is going to start in your back yard; stay with me. You're holding a hose, you turn on the water, and it shoots through the hose and out the nozzle. The water is moving because it's under pressure. Similarly, when your heart beats it creates pressure that enables your blood to "water" your body with the nutrients that are in your blood.

Three things affect the amount of pressure that pushes blood through your body: how forcefully the heart pumps, how much blood there is, and how narrow the smallest blood vessels are. That last one may need some explanation. When you're watering plants, and you want the stream of water to go farther, what do you do? You make the nozzle smaller. Narrowing the opening through which the water flows increases the pressure, and the water then is able to reach the distant flowerbed.

Managing emotionally driven weight gain requires planning ahead.

How much and when you eat isn't driven just by hunger, which you likely already know if you've ever found yourself hunched over a bowl of ice cream after having a particularly stressful day. Stress can set off a cascade of physical reactions in your body that may not only drive you to eat more and make you crave less nutritious, fattening comfort foods, but also help you pack on extra pounds much more easily.

"Stress drives up levels of a hormone called cortisol in the blood," says Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. Cortisol is a hormone produced by the adrenal gland that helps to regulate your metabolism. It also plays a role in blood sugar management and memory. When levels of cortisol rise, it can promote inflammation and may spur the body to start stockpiling fat around the midsection. "Stress might also disrupt sleep and drive people to seek out food when they wouldn't normally — such as in the middle of the night," says Dr. Stanford.

Learning to "belly breathe" helps ease your body's response to stress and tension.

The average person takes between 17,000 and 23,000 breaths per day, but there is a good chance we don't always breathe the right way. Chalk it up to how we deal with stress.

"When we feel something as a threat, our fight-or-flight response automatically kicks in," says Dr. Katherine Rosa, with the Harvard-affiliated Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine. "Our breathing becomes more rapid and shallow and our hearts beat faster, all of which prepares us to run away from the threat."