Stressing the link between stress and disease

Are you worried when you don’t have a thing to worry about? When things are going right, do you think there’s something wrong somewhere? If your answer is yes to both questions, you must have a Type A personality, described as "angry, hostile, driven," or a Type D personality, described as "negative, insecure, distressed." According to recent studies, both are susceptible to an increased risk of heart disease. Findings indicate that the accumulation of stress hormones may cause the narrowing of the blood vessels and hasten the formation of new blockages, according to Catherine Christie and Susan Mitchell with Debra Fulghum Bruce, authors of Eat to Stay Young – The Anti-Aging Program (available at National Book Store). It’s more likely for the hostile Type A patients to undergo a repeat angioplasty than mild-tempered patients.

Here are the other personality types and the kind of illness each type normally attracts:

• Type A: Angry, hostile, driven – heart disease

• Type B: Non-type A, moves slower, takes time to smell the roses – less risk than "angry" type A

• Type C: Passive, endures great personal pain, says yes when prefers to say no – increased risk of some cancers, frequent infections

• Type T: Thrill-seeking – decreased life expectancy due to risks they take.

Which one are you? Of course, there’s no such thing as a pure Type A, B, C, or T personality. The book says that though our genetic code gives a clue to our ultimate personality, the environment in which we find ourselves plays an important role, too, and you might be "a composite of all these personalities."

Stress – of the nail-chewing, hair-tearing, head-banging kind – is so much a part of living in this rat-racy world you just can’t imagine a day without it (though certainly, we could all use one). For instance, there’s the all-too-common stress associated with driving and having to cope with everyday traffic jams. Road rage, says the book, is "a key marker for hostility in today’s world and is characterized by aggressive driving and the stress associated with getting stuck in traffic."

The authors stress: "Driving aggressively is not only dangerous but research suggests an association with heart disease risk because of its relationship to hostility in general."

So how do we combat this thing called stress-aging?

"Get involved with more people," the authors recommend. "A host of comprehensive studies now reveal that people who have strong social support tend to do better in every life situation, and that means less stress-aging."

The saying "No man is an island" holds so much water. People around the world are linked by that common desire to stay connected – hence the telephone, cell phone, fax, computer, and whatnot.

The book goes on to ask, "Why is this connection with others or social support so important?"

The answer: "Close relationships with family and friends allow us to nourish our hungry souls. When we are tied emotionally to those we love, we can let out our feelings of fear, insecurity, and guilt, and receive comfort from people who accept us – just as we are – with no strings attached. But if we have no place that feels safe enough to let down our emotional defenses, then we tend to keep our guard up all the time – a negative, cynical, and sometimes defensive guard that numbly masks the very problems we are facing."

Those who surround themselves with friends have a stronger immunity, a better shield against disease and stress-aging.

On the other hand, following a nine-year study of 7,000 respondents, California researchers found that independent of risk factors like smoking and drinking, loners face a much greater risk of dying of all causes than did those with close ties to family and friends. A researcher reports in the Journal of the American Medical Association that "people with diverse social ties have a greater resistance to upper respiratory illness or colds; the more types of social ties, the more resistance to common colds and fewer cold symptoms."

How else can we de-stress and deactivate the stress-aging bomb?

For one, weight-training (even with light weights, two or three times a week with 24 to 36 hours of rest between sessions) or even regular exercise (but not to the point of exhaustion) has a lot of age-deactivating benefits, to name some: It increases energy level; reduces stress, anxiety and depression; improves sleep; improves focus and concentration; helps with weight loss; decreases heart disease and cancer risk; increases HDL or good choletesterol; lowers blood pressure; controls blood sugar levels; improves bone density; increases fitness needed for better sex; and boosts immune system.

Then there’s meditation or prayer. Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard (one of the first medical researchers to study the interplay of mind and body, particularly the health benefits of prayer or meditation) found that prayer or meditation "leads to healthy changes known as the relaxation response, which brings about the opposite of ‘fight or flight,’ helping to decrease cortisol secretion so optimal immune function can be restored."

This relaxation response slows down the sympathetic nervous system and the person experiences decreased heart rate, decreased blood pressure, decreased sweat production, decreased oxygen consumption, decreased catacholamine production (brain chemicals associated with the stress response) and decreased cortisol production (stress hormone).

But if everything else palls, have a belly-good laugh. According to the book, scientists have found that laughter can produce a state of positive stress or what is called eustress. A journalist, Norman Cousins, was the first to prove the healing power of laughter by laughing himself out of a serious ailment which his doctors said was incurable. Proving his doctors wrong, he watched feel-good movies that made him laugh and enjoyed a real belly laugh or two or three a day. Cousins outlived his doctors.

A laughter a day can also help you sleep soundly, according to some researchers – it relieves anxiety, decreases stress-producing hormones and increases immune system activity. Laughter is even as good as exercise. According to one psychiatrist who studied the aerobic effect of laughter, 100 laughs are equivalent to 10 minutes spent rowing, which isn’t funny if you ask us. Indeed, laughter is the best medicine – and best of all, it’s free and it’s fun. So can you imagine the unbearable angst women who’ve had a face-lift are going through?