Word: cortisol
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...anxiety. In a recent study at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), scientists asked a group of women to give a speech in front of a stone-faced audience of strangers. On the first day, all the participants said they felt threatened, and they showed spikes in cortisol and fear hormones. On subsequent days, however, those women who had reported rebounding from a major life crisis in the past no longer felt the same subjective threat over speaking in public - and did not show a jump in cortisol. They had learned that this negative event, too, would pass...
...there's nothing remarkable - much less spiritual - about them. You live longer if you go to church because you're there for the cholesterol-screening drive and the visiting-nurse service. Your viral load goes down when you include spirituality in your fight against HIV because your levels of cortisol - a stress hormone - go down first. "Science doesn't deal in supernatural explanations," says Richard Sloan, professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and author of Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine. "Religion and science address different concerns...
Exactly how a lack of sleep is feeding plaque in the heart arteries isn't yet clear, but one explanation may involve inflammation. Too little sleep can raise cortisol levels, which fuels inflammation that can destabilize plaques. Once these deposits rupture, they can block vessels in the heart or brain, causing a heart attack or stroke. While the Chicago team did not track levels of cortisol to test this theory, future studies might...
...patients with heart disease at the VA for nearly five years. The patients filled out regular questionnaires to determine their mood state, and were asked yearly to report on any heart-related events. Researchers took blood and urine samples to measure their levels of omega-3 fatty acids, cortisol and the inflammatory marker C-reactive protein, as well as the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine - all agents that may be involved in both depression and heart disease. In all, about 20% of the participants reported depressive symptoms; over five years, those patients had a 50% higher rate of additional heart problems...
...poor economy is putting on their poor marriage but think it's because of something else. John Coates, a Deutsche Bank trader turned Cambridge University researcher, measured the naturally occurring steroids in 17 British male traders over time and found high levels of testosterone during bull markets and of cortisol during volatility. Cortisol helps the body deal with threatening situations. But prolonged exposure to it, as during a lengthy downturn, makes people irrationally fearful, so when confronted with neutral situations--say, that their spouse would like the leaves raked--they react as if threatened. In other words...