You're Not Getting Older -- You're Getting Stressed
Looking At Connections Between Aging And Stress
Jacqueline Tresl, R.N., gives tips on coping with stressSeptember 28, 2000, 5:21 p.m. EDT
Imagine that last year, your career ended abruptly. Four months later, you developed hypertension. Ten weeks ago, you buried your beloved spouse, sold your three-story house and downsized into an efficiency apartment.
Think it could never happen to you, so many major life events compressed in a short period of time? Unfortunately, it's all too plausible. It's called "aging" -- a life passage filled with change and finality.
For some, growing old is deeply stressful, often leading to an unshakable apathy and depression. For those with a hardy personality and "sense of coherence," aging is just another part of the continuum that is the journey of life, not significantly more stressful than the earlier challenges of adulthood.
Up to a point. And then, according to gerontological specialist Dr. Morton Lieberman, even the most optimistic octogenarian will begin to feel the emotional weight of "an awareness that one has lived a lifetime ... the sense of personal finitude is real and palpable."
Everything Changes
At every age, we experience stressors that demand coping and adaptation skills. But stress can be especially challenging and difficult to manage for the elderly. For example, an older person facing a visit to a daughter-in-law's for Christmas dinner may suffer high anxiety, tension and dread that a younger person would not even consciously register.
That's because levels of acceptable stress are subjective and individualized, based in part on how the person views life events. Many times a life event that used to be simple and enjoyable becomes, with old age, weighed down with stress.
Too much stress can predispose a person to physical and mental illness. For the elderly, this is a double whammy, because their immune systems are, in many cases, already compromised. According to Dr. Gene Cohen of the National Institute of Aging, "The relationship between physical health and mental health is greatest in later life."
Stress pioneer Dr. Hans Selye defined stress as "the non-specific response of the body to any demand placed upon it." Stress does not necessarily have to be harmful, as long as it doesn't cause distress, the prolonged emotional stress that is so difficult to deal with. But too often, as we age, everyday hassles begin to feel like distress and trigger detrimental physiological and psychological changes.
Resistance To Illness: The Link
According to gerontologist Dr. James Birren, "Stress has been implicated in practically every disease known." In the elderly, there appears to an especially strong correlation between distress and physical illness.
Studies on the effects of physical stress have shown that when the aged are placed under prolonged periods of distress, they experience loss of appetite, weight loss, a lowered lymphocyte count (which impairs immune function) and an increase in psychological distress and serum cholesterol levels.
Prolonged distress also increases the body's production of chemicals known as free radicals that can sap immunity.
A 1993 study showed that the "higher the subject's reported level of stress -- whether measured by negative life change events, perceived stress level or negative feelings -- the higher the likelihood that the subject would actually become infected with a cold."
Aging Causes Stress -- And Vice-Versa!
Stress causes the brain to age more rapidly and can even result in the loss of neuronal function and death of brain cells. These effects are necessarily more noticeable in the older population.
In addition, one class of stress hormones called glucocorticoids plays an important biochemical role in the parts of the brain concerned with learning and memory. High levels of glucocorticoids are released and circulated during distress. This can lead to permanent impairment in the function of specific brain cells, adversely affecting a person's ability to learn new information On Stress and Aging.
Elevated glucocorticoid levels can also cause an accumulation of a toxic buildup of calcium in those same brain neurons, leading to additional deficits in learning and memory. Stress hormones can and do damage those parts of the brain involved in cognition.
How It Happens
Consider the mind/body connection in one major life event -- the stress of retirement. Aging expert Meredith Minkler calls retirement "the beginning of the roleless role," when older people are "forced to create their own roles in the absence of socially defined ones."
Research has shown that blood cholesterol levels remain normal immediately proceeding retirement and during the "honeymoon phase" that immediately follows. But living through the actual life experience of retirement, known as the "disenchantment phase," causes cholesterol levels to rise.
This "disenchantment phase" is followed by a "reorientation phase," during which the retiree adjusts to the role of being retired and accepts it. For some, however, the "termination stage" follows closely behind. This phase is often characterized by illness, the retirement role having been "replaced by the sick and disabled role as the key organizing factor in an individual's life."
A study conducted in Lancashire, England, showed an increased rate of sickness four to six years after retirement. A U.S. study found that workers were "more likely to suffer serious illness, and to die, three to five years after retirement."
There are many social, physical and behavorial factors that affect the way we age. Daily doses of stress are one important component. If we decrease distress as we age, can we live to be healthier septugenarians?
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