Don't Sweat The Small Stuff: Little Things Can Cause Big Health Problems

Small stressors are inevitable, but even they can be particularly damaging to men's health.

A recent study published in the journal Experimental Gerontology shows that the chronic stresses of everyday life can even lead to an early death, according to researchers.

"We're looking at long-term patterns of stress - if your stress level is chronically high, it could impact your mortality, or if you have a series of stressful life events, that could affect your mortality," said Carolyn Aldwin, director of the Center for Healthy Aging Research in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at OSU, in a news release. 

For the findings, researchers examined two main types of stressors: everyday hassles, such as job stress or typical arguments with family and friends, or issues from significant life events, including job loss or the death of a loved one.

Study results revealed that either stressor was very difficult on the men or women, independent of mortality effect. For instance, while experiencing several stressful life events did not necessarily have high stress levels on stress from everyday hassles, it was determined more by how the person reacted to the stress.

To gather this information, researchers used data from the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study. They studied stressful life events and everyday hassles for 1,293 men between 1989 and 2005 then followed the men until 2010. About 43 percent of the men had died by the end of the study period.

About a third of the men who reported having few stressful life events had died, while closer to half of the men reporting moderate or high numbers of stressful events had died by the end of the study.
Men who reported few everyday hassles had the lowest mortality rate, at 28.7 percent. Just under half of the men reporting a mid-range number of hassles had died by the end of the study, while 64.3 percent of the men reporting a high number of hassles had died.

Though stressful events are certainly hard to avoid, working to control difficult attitudes while simultaneously reflecting the right mind set can dramatically help to deal with the difficulties of life.