Overcoming the Aging Effects of Stress

Excerpted from
The Life Extension Revolution: The New Science of Growing Older Without Aging
By Philip Lee Miller, M.D., Monica Reinagel

I have known people-and perhaps you are one of them-who claim to thrive on stress. They feel that stress, challenge, and competition motivate them to perform better, to achieve and accomplish more. This makes perfect sense. Adrenaline and Cortisol, the hormones that your body produces when you are excited or challenged (or angry or threatened), are specifically designed to help you function at a higher level, making you stronger, faster, and smarter.

While it is true that Cortisol and adrenaline can have these very beneficial effects, your body is simply not designed to live on a steady diet of these hormones. Adrenaline works much like caffeine in the body, stimulating the sympathetic nervous system to create a hyperalert state. But in the same way that drinking too much coffee can leave you feeling weak and jittery, too much adrenaline is exhausting to the system.

The effects of excess Cortisol are even more dangerous. Over time, too much Cortisol in your system can harden your arteries, poison your brain cells, thin your bones, pad your waistline, and put your immune system to sleep. What's more, stress also burns up your supply of DHEA, a crucial anti-aging hormone. In fact, stress can quickly give you the hormone profile of someone twice your age.

Have you ever heard a story about someone's hair turning white as a result of a shock or trauma? New research shows that this old tale has a basis in fact. A fascinating study reported by the National Academy of Sciences in late 2004 showed that the biological impact of stress extends all the way to the genetic level, where it affects the part of our genes which, among other things, determine when our hair begins to turn gray.

Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco looked at the DNA of about five dozen women, some of whom were caring for children with severe disabilities. Not surprisingly, the mothers with disabled children felt that they were under heavy stress. And, in fact, the scientists found that the stress of caring for these children could actually be seen in the mothers' DNA-which resembled the DNA of much older women.

More common than the go-getters who thrive on stress are those who-like these mothers-feel mentally and physically exhausted by the stress in their lives. But I don't find that it's very helpful simply to advise people to reduce stress. Obviously, if they could see how to make their lives less stressful, they would have done so already. And even if they could somehow manage to schedule a vacation or make time for a yoga class, reversing the physiological damage caused by chronic stress may require more aggressive intervention.

Here's the point that many people don't understand about stress: It doesn't matter whether the stress is good or bad. It doesn't matter whether you win or lose. If you have a chronic imbalance of stress hormones (too much Cortisol and too little DHEA), you are aging faster than you need to, and opening the door for diseases from heart disease to diabetes to depression. Even if you can't have-or don't want-a less stressful life, you need to buffer your body from the aging effects of stress hormones.

Stressed For Success

Dr. Hans Selye, the brilliant physician who first identified and mapped out the stress response, acknowledged that stress was an unavoidable fact of life. After a lifetime of research on the health effects of stress, Selye ultimately concluded that stress was absolutely necessary to our survival, and even desirable for its ability to enhance our performance. As he wrote in The Stress of Life (a highly readable-and highly recommended-treatise that remains as seminal today as it was when he wrote it five decades ago), "the complete absence of stress is death. "

But as Selye and later stress researchers have shown, our individual response to stress is the critical factor that determines its impact on our health. Some personality types handle stress more successfully than others. Others (the so-called type As) are at particular risk from stress-related disease. Herbert Benson, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and other relaxation researchers have shown that we can all learn to respond to stress more skillfully, using mind-body techniques to minimize the damage to our systems. Anti-aging medicine adds another powerful dimension by offering therapies that counteract the hormonal imbalances caused by stress.

Living on the Edge

Carrie is one of those people who seem to go from crisis to crisis. Carrie is smart and ambitious, but she tends to take on a little more than she can handle. She has so much going on all the time that things frequently seem to be on the verge of falling apart. When she first consulted me, she was once again going through a difficult time.

As the office manager for a busy marketing firm, Carrie had a lot of responsibility at work. She was also going to school at night to earn her MBA. The workload at school was overwhelming, and her boss was not sympathetic or understanding about the extra demands that her school-work was making on her time. To top it all off, she'd recently broken up with her live-in boyfriend and was sleeping on a friend's couch until she could move into a new apartment. But she couldn't seem to muster the energy to look for an apartment in addition to everything else she was juggling.

Not surprisingly, Carrie's stress level was very high. She was experiencing a variety of physical and emotional symptoms, including depression, panic attacks, and difficulty sleeping. The antidepressants that her doctor had prescribed didn't seem to be helping very much. When I questioned her a bit more, I learned that although the present circumstances were extreme, Carrie actually had been suffering from these kinds of stress-related symptoms for years. This suggested to me that Carrie might be at risk of more serious health problems, due to a chronic stress hormone imbalance.

Treating the Symptoms of Stress Just Masks the Problem

Doctors typically treat stress-related symptoms such as Carrie's with everything from sleeping aids and antidepressants to beta-blockers and antianxiety medications. Not only do these drugs carry serious side effects and risks of their own, but none of them addresses the hormonal impact of stress.

With my own patients, I aim to do more than relieve the symptoms of stress. I also want to bring the stress hormones back into a healthy balance. Interestingly, I find that the symptoms usually improve or disappear altogether in the process. Medications can be avoided or reduced. At the same time, risk factors can be reversed. The aging process can be slowed. This chapter will show you how to do exactly that.

How Well Are You Coping?

Some people are able to handle a lot of stress; others seem to unravel over relatively minor problems. Our individual tolerance for stress has a lot to do with genetics and personality type. Even those who do well under stressful conditions, however, may be suffering from the invisible effects of stress hormone imbalance. A blood test can give you and your physician a more precise picture of how well or how poorly your body is coping with stress.

To evaluate the impact of stress, I look at the levels of two important hormones. Cortisol is one of the "fight-or-flight" hormones produced by the adrenal glands in response to stress. People under stress have elevated levels of Cortisol, which, as we have already seen, can be a serious health risk. The other hormone that I look at is dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), which is also produced by the adrenals (as well as by the ovaries or testicles, in smaller amounts). Chronic stress tends to depress DHEA levels.

Often referred to as the anti-aging hormone, DHEA is the most abundant of all the steroid hormones. It is anabolic in nature, meaning that it promotes the renewal and replacement of tissues. For example, it stimulates the activity of osteoblasts (bone-building cells) and fibroblasts (skin-renewal cells), which translates into strong bones and youthful skin.

DHEA is highly active in the brain, increasing the levels of neurotransmitters that are crucial for both short- and long-term memory and learning. By promoting neurotransmitter production, DHEA, appears to protect the brain against age-associated decline.

A robust immune response likewise depends on DHEA to boost the number of immune cells and increase their vigilance and activity. DHEA regulates immune function by modulating the release of interleukins, interferons, tumor necrosis factor, and other immune chemicals that can have a positive or negative effect on your health.