The Psychology behind Why Stress Impacts the Immune system

Stress is adaptive, which means that when homo sapiens first lived in the Savannah from caves, they were under threat from dangers such as evading wildlife and adaptive means that it conferred a benefit on them that made it easy to survive. The flight or fight response allowed the body to react to stress and get out of the way or hang around and fight.

The evolutionary psychologists have referred to lots of behaviours as adaptive. What happens to the immune system after a lot of chronic stress is that it wants to shut down, but the body would be under total threat fro mall sorts of pathogens if that happens so it downgrades its ability to work, in other words it does not function at its full capacity.

Miller Cohen and Ritchey (2002) conducted a large study of parents of children with cancer and a control group of parents who had healthy children. The results were that chronic psychological stress could reduce the immune system’s reactions to the endocrine reactions that were used to fight the inflammatory response.

Fighting cancer requires a holistic approach and a positive upbeat attitude, being optimistic seems to help the immune system fight disease, in other words if you believe that you can fight the disease you have more chance of fighting the disease. Doctors have long observed that if you are excessively frightened before surgery then your recuperation period is longer than those that believe the surgery will have a positive outcome. The number of lymphocyte cells in your system correlates directly with a patients personal levels of optimism.

We are also affected by our environment and our physical well is affected by the circumstances that surround our daily activities. If you have a strong support group either family of friends then you are more likely to build a good immune system. Positive social support is thought to allow us to control hypertension and therefore reduce the possibility of cardio vascular disease. The ability to handle stress proactively alleviates the endocrinal response of producing more adrenalin and therefore boosts the immune system naturally.

Denying that there is a physical problem can also make the system worse and ultimately reduce the immune system, refusing to use the social network system can also have a negative impact on the effectiveness of the immune system, Aspects of denial are an inflated belief in our own importance and a belief that we have to work or cannot time out to heal ourselves.

There have been large studies carried out on stress levels and the immune system functioning of AIDS patents and when they were taught coping strategies, stress management techniques and offered psychological support
There was little difference six weeks later. However interestingly six months later their immune systems were still functioning well and they had lower levels of psychological stress. These figures were borne out on a study of cancer patients (Glaser & Glaser 1994)

However there is contention amongst the medical fraternity whether or not that it is behaviour that causes the immune system to downgrade or the results of that behavior. For instance a depressed person may drink and as a result of drinking they may eat less, poor nutrition means that the body cannot maintain the required levels of white blood cells to fight infection, and the person becomes immune compromised because their risk of infection is higher.

Cancer sufferers may find it difficult to eat because they feel nauseous as a result of cancer treatments. They have to make other lifestyle choices because they may have interrupted sleep patterns, they may wake often or wake up especially early all of these very real physical effects add to psychological stress. Further research by Anderson and Glaser suggests that physical activity reduces the levels of stress and in turn reduces the depression. (Anderson, Glaser, and Kiecolt-Glaser, 1994)