Hi Don,
The current research points to the immune system being _deregulated_ by
stress. The immune system is like an orchestra and things can go wrong
in many ways: some cells being less active, some cells being too active,
some cells not listening properly to each other, etc. One current
hypothesis to explain why stress exacerbates autoimmune disorders goes
as follows: In a person whose systems are being regulated properly,
cortisol (stress hormone that among its many functions inhibits
inflammation) acts to down-regulate pro-inflammatory cytokines (chemical
messengers of produced mainly by the immune system). Pro-inflammatory
cytokines are beneficial in short term responses to injuries such as
cuts (e.g., redness and swelling helps to draw blood with nutrients and
immune cells and diffuse them into tissues surrounding cut), but are not
beneficial in long-term (e.g., long term, chronic inflammation
associated with many diseases). Luckily if everything is being
regulated properly, cortisol is also being released in response to the
injury stimulating our stress response and this turns off the
pro-inflammatory cytokine response. The problem is that there is now
preliminary evidence that elevated cortisol levels over the long term
can result in pro-inflammatory response becoming resistant to this turn
off message (similar to pancreatic cells becoming resistant to elevated
levels of sugar over the long term in Type II diabetes). This can
result in people having elevated levels of both cortisol and
pro-inflammatory cytokines. These elevated pro-inflammatory cytokine
levels have been linked to worsening symptoms in autoimmune disorders
where inflammatory plays a role.
I hope this helps. It is still a hypothesis, but it seems that you
can't pick up a psychoneuroimmunology article these days without someone
talking about pro-inflammatory cytokines (if memory serves me right some
examples are interleukin 1 and 6 and TNF)
Sincerely,
Martha Capreol
R.Psyc.
Instructor, University of British Columbia
Don Allen wrote:
Hi All-
A colleague got the following question from a student:
"If excess stress is bad because it damages the autoimmune stystem
then why does my mother's doctor tell her to avoid stress since she
has Lupus. Shouldn't something that interferes with autoimmune
response help a person with an autoimmune disease?"
I know that there are Tipsters who are very well versed in this area
(I'm not). Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
-Don
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