Stress Found to Accelerate Chromosome Aging

th3d0ct0r writes "Various sources report that according to the findings of a science team led by Elissa Epel at the University of California, SF, stress can cause accelerated aging of cells. The mecanism seems to be linked to oxidative stress at cellular level, that keeps the enzyme telomerase from regenerating the chromosomial telomere caps which shorten a bit during each replication cycle. Telomere caps are known to be a very important factor determining the replication capacity of every cell. Once these caps are gone,a cell goes to a state of senescence, and ultimately dies. People exposed to prolonged periods of stress have been shown to have significantly shorter telomere caps on the chromosomes of their white blood cells."

Comments

Stress the managing of stress

[Staplerh]

Further evidence that stress has real, actual impact on the human body and that stress management programmes should be accorded respect. I don't know any statistics on the subject, but for every workplace that has a stress programme there are certainly many that do not.

Just as asbestos is a workplace hazard, stress should be considered in the similar vein. While people may chuckle at the mental image of a bunch of cubicle workers doing tai-chi or some other stress exercise, it may be the right move to deal with a signifigant health hazard.

Perhaps somebody should do a study of those EA workers and if their health was impacted by the long periods of stressful work?

Re:Stress the managing of stress

[nomel]

I wonder if caffeine accelerates aging since it puts the body in the same state as if it were in stress.

So....

[tansey]

Does this mean IT people will start getting hazard pay?

I am curious

[Murphy Murph]

I am curious what how this relates to the effect of stress on the immune system.

Is the immune system weakened somehow by this?
Are a weakened immune system and this shortening of the telomeres both symptoms of another problem?
Are the telomeres shortened in these white blood cells because the immune system has been running it's self to rags due to stress?
Or is the fact they found this shortening in white blood cells a red herring?

Then again, this was a study of 58 women. Not a very large sample, and I'm male - so I'm safe.

(I always was jealous of my sisters as a child. I found it unfair that sharks were man-eaters.)

Can you really minimize stress

[Drunken_Jackass]

I mean, at some level, don't you as a thinking human, start stressing out about something? Aren't we all at a basic level stressed that we don't have enough to eat, that we won't have a place to live and that we won't pass along our genes to future generations?

Or are they referring to "Modern Stress" - something that only afflicts the "Modern World"?

Correlation/Causation

[Anonymous Coward]

To study the effect of stress on the cell, Epel and her colleagues looked at the chromosomes in the white blood cells of 58 mothers, two-thirds of whom had chronically ill children. The other women had healthy children so may be expected to suffer less stress.

Perhaps they have merely discovered that people with shortened telomeres are more likely to have chronically ill children.

I knew I wasn't crazy

[Oriumpor]

I remember seeing Clinton before he was elected, and then pictures of him at the end of his term. He got old FAST.

1992
2000

But "psychological stress" is crap...

[CodeWanker]

because all the impacts they should measure are physiological. They ought to measure the relative frequency that the fight or flight response gets triggered without a satisfactory response (the body can neither fight nor flee,) the average amount of sleep, the average amount of aerobic exercise, the relative frequency of overeating and drinking to self-medicate a negative emotional state, and other things we can quantify. "Sick kids worry parents to death" is not a scientific premise or conclusion. And I speak as a parent who would worry himself to death if his daughter had a serious illness.