Cancer and Stress Relation
Is cancer and stress playing an impact in your life? Are you or someone you know facing the effects that cancer and stress can have on one’s health? Cancer is a malignant, chronic disease that takes on many forms that can appear throughout your body. It is when abnormal cells in your body appear and segregate in an uncontrollable fashion. Stress is defined as “a challenging event that requires physiological, cognitive, or behavioral adaptation” (Oltmanns & Emery, 2011, p.232).
Cancer can cause a great deal of stress on one’s mind and body when undergoing vast amounts of procedures, treatments, and an overall ride in an emotional rollercoaster. So can cancer cause stress or stress cause cancer? The answer actually lies in both questions and work both ways. Chronic stress can weaken the immune system preventing the T cells in the body to counterattack all the mutant cells that’s destroying the body (Brannon & Feist, 2011). I will review different articles that all connect to the topic of cancer and stress and provide you with the core results found in research.
The first article titled Cancer and Stress by Lawrence S. and Hymie states that “stress may influence the carcinogenic process” (Lawrence & Hymie, 2011, p.1). Through extensive research by using retrospective studies in an infrahuman experimentation they were able to find that stress and cancer does show a significant correlation. Since stress influences all our “neurochemical, hormonal, and immunological functioning” (Lawrence & Hymie, 2011, p.1), we come to conclusions on its effects and influence on tumor growth in the body as discussed in the article. The point to this article was not to claim stress causes cancer, but rather that stress can influence and induce stress hormones chronically resulting in other abnormalities in the body to occur such as tumors that can affect your everyday functioning.
The second article titled, “Distress in couples coping with cancer: A meta-analysis and critical review of role and gender effects” analyzes gender effects when coping with stress and cancer. The researchers measured their findings through a meta-analysis and narrative critical assessment. Women consistently reported more stress than men regardless of their roles in the situation, but moderate results were proven to be the case when stress was measured between the cancer patient and supporter. There were distinctive links between communication patterns in couples that were found to influence more stress in the couple’s relationship while producing environmental and social stressors. What their findings suggest are that other factors should be considered beyond the event of cancer that could cause distress in couples and influence those types of physiological and psychological stress onto them. We should focus more on the gender affects to role functioning and its significance, rather than stress alone.
The importance for the public to be aware of these concerns is because essentially this is your life, your body, and your health on the line and if we all as individuals don’t take our health seriously then we are going to face major problems in our lives. Sometimes the public just simply do not know the effects and levels of stress can cause a person or the effects of cancer to one’s body. That’s why it’s the Health Psychologists job to inform the public through raising awareness, implementing stress management and support interventions accessible to the community, and ultimately educating and instilling knowledge to clients or anyone whose concerned.
Here is a remarkable story from a cancer survivor I wanted to share with all of you.
References:
Sklar, L. S., & Anisman, H. (1981). Stress and cancer. Psychological Bulletin, 89(3), 369-406.
Retrieved from http://login.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/614289651?accountid=4485
Hagedoorn, M., Sanderman, R., Bolks, H. N., Tuinstra, J., & Coyne, J. C. (2008). Distress in
couples coping with cancer: A meta-analysis and critical review of role and gender effects. Psychological Bulletin, 134(1), 1-30. Retrieved from http://login.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/614475202?accountid=4485
YouTube Video:
Picture Link:
No comments:
Post a Comment