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 Translate Into YOUR Dialect Today's Motivational Reading
Why Stress Causes Aging…What You Can Do to Stop It! If you've ever blamed stress for new wrinkles or gray hairs, you
may have been right. There’s now strong proof long-term stress
makes us grow old before our time. But … there’s also new proof
that a positive outlook can reduce impact of stress on your
health. It cannot ravage the body if your the mind says “no.”
The Physical Impact of Stress
Studies show that high levels of stress can lead to obesity,
and definitely trigger a raft of diseases from heart attacks
and cancer … to ulcers, colitis, and all the age-related
disorders like arthritis. The Center for Disease Control and
Prevention claims as much as 90% of doctor visits in the USA
are triggered by a stress related illness.
When you get hit by stress, your adrenal glands crank out
powerful hormones such as adrenaline that drive your blood
pressure up. And with chronic stress, those hormones stay at
dangerously high levels.
New research has shown that over-the-top stress goes beyond a
temporary increase in blood pressure, and actually injures (and
often kills) the cells of your body and brain. This accelerates
the aging process, leaving you prone to a long list of diseases.
Dr Elissa Epel of University of California in San Francisco
studied women suffering from the intense stress of caring for
chronically ill children. Her study looked deep inside their
cells to determine if stress was affecting a key part of their
chromosomes called a “telomere.”
Telomeres cap the ends of the chromosomes containing your body'
s DNA, and are recognized markers of aging. As people get older
this cap gets ground down. When the telomere gets too short to
work properly, cells all over your body start to sicken or die -
- and the diseases of old age set in.
Epel’s research team found that the longer a woman had cared
for a child with a serious illness, the shorter her telomere --
a finding that points straight to rapid aging. "It's very sad,"
Epel says. "These women are paying an intense personal price."
But this premature aging response was not confined to
caregivers: The study also studied mothers of healthy kids.
Most of the women in this group did not report burn-out stress
level. But those that did also had shorter telomeres, and the
related premature aging response.
When the researchers looked at the stressed-out women in both
group, they found dramatic signs of damage. "They had lost the
amount of telomeric DNA one would expect to lose in 10 years of
aging," Dr. Epel says.
Proof a Positive Attitude Prevents Aging We all have stressful
things happen to us –- loss of a job, a natural disaster, a
divorce, a car accident. But does that type of stress doom us
to DNA damage? Probably not. Providing you resolve the
stressful situation and it does not become chronic, you can
rebound and further develop your resilience and stress
resistance.
The women in Dr Epel’s study who viewed their situation positively
didn't seem to suffer the ill effects of stress. A positive outlook
on life, a regular stress-management regime, and the support of
friends can help buffer the potential damage of ongoing stress,
Epel recommends.
Lengthen Your Life A great way to reduce your stress and slow
down the aging process is laughter. Laughter protects your
nervous system and gives your endocrine system a much-needed
rest, all at the same time. It’s actually a tremendous healing
activity.
When you laugh you boost your immune system, clear waste products
out of your internal organs and tissues, and increase the oxygen
in your body at both cellular and organ levels. (It’s interesting
to note that cancer cells die in the presence of oxygen.)
So if nothing else, at least do get a good laugh about something.
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Today's Hot Tip
What if every day of your life unfolded in a magical way
You Can't Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought!
Peter McWilliams
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