Future Health Depends on How You React to Stress Today

Stress is a constant companion, to almost everybody. But it is unclear what causes stress. It can start with too much pressure, self imposed or external circumstances. The stress levels can trigger emotional and physical health problems. Hence don't let stress hijack your life.

Focusing on 'stress' that is an epidemic in the Western world, the researchers at Penn University went on to break a self-denial myth that stress does not initiate health issues. The way people react to the stress is what determines whether they will be victims of any health consequences, the researchers conclude.

"Our research shows that how you react to what happens in your life today predicts your chronic health conditions and 10 years in the future, independent of your current health and your future stress," said David Almeida, professor of human development and family studies.

"For example, if you have a lot of work to do today and you are really grumpy because of it, then you are more likely to suffer negative health consequences 10 years from now than someone who also has a lot of work to do today, but doesn't let it bother her."

In order to study the relationships among stressful events in daily life and the people reaction to those events and their health and well being, the researchers Almeida and his colleagues used a subset of people who are participating in the MIDUS (Midlife in the United States) study.

Apart from this the researchers surveyed 2000 individuals by phone every night for ight consecutive nights regarding what happened to them in previous 24 hours.

The participants were questioned about the use of time, their moods, the physical health symptoms they had felt, their productivity and the stressful events they had experienced, such as being stuck in traffic, having an argument with somebody, or taking care of a sick child.

"Most social-science surveys are based on long retrospective accounts of your life in the past month or maybe the past week," Almeida said. "By asking people to focus just on the past 24 hours, we were able to capture a particular day in someone's life. Then, by studying consecutive days, we were able to see the ebb and flow of their daily experiences."

They even worked on saliva samples that were collected from 2,000 individuals at four different times on four of those eight days. With the saliva samples they were able to determine amounts of the stress hormone, cortisol.

They then linked the information they collected to data from the larger MIDUS study, including the participants' demographic information, their chronic health conditions, their personalities and their social networks.

"We did this 10 years ago in 1995 and again in 2005," Almeida said. "By having longitudinal data, not only were we able to look at change in daily experiences over this time but how experiences that were occurring 10 years ago are related to health and well being now."

The team noticed that the people who became upset by daily stressors and continue to live with them after they have passed were more prone to suffer from chronic health problems especially pain, such as that related to arthritis and cardiovascular issues 10 years later.

"I like to think of people as being one of two types," Almeida said. "With Velcro people, when a stressor happens it sticks to them; they get really upset and, by the end of the day, they are still grumpy and fuming. With Teflon people, when stressors happen to them they slide right off. It's the Velcro people who end up suffering health consequences down the road."

According to Almedia, certain types of people are more likely to experience stress in their lives. Younger people, for example, have more stress than older people; people with higher cognitive abilities have more stress than people with lower cognitive abilities; and people with higher levels of education have more stress than people with less education.

"What is interesting is how these people deal with their stress," said Almeida. "Our research shows that people age 65 and up tend to be more reactive to stress than younger people, likely because they aren't exposed to a lot of stress at this stage in their lives, and they are out of practice in dealing with it. Younger people are better at dealing with it because they cope with it so frequently. Likewise, our research shows that people with lower cognitive abilities and education levels are more reactive to stress than people with higher cognitive abilities and education levels, likely because they have less control over the stressors in their lives."

"If this is the case, reducing exposure to stressors isn't the answer," said Almeida. "We just need to figure out how to manage them better."

The results of the study that is being funded by the National Institute on Aging, appear online in the current issue of Annals of Behavioral Medicine.