“People with higher stress scores had immune profiles that seemed higher, with lower percentages of new disease fighters and higher percentages of worn-out T cells,” Klopack said.
In addition to finding that people who reported higher levels of stress had more zombie cells, Klopack and his team found that they also had fewer “naive” T cells, which are the fresh, young cells needed to take on new invaders.
“This article adds to the findings that psychological stress, on the one hand, and well-being and resources, on the other hand, are associated with immunological aging,” said clinical psychologist Suzanne Segerstrom, who was not involved in the study. .
Segerstrom, a professor of health, social, and developmental psychology at the University of Kentucky at Lexington, has studied the connection between self-regulation, stress, and immune function.
“In one of our most recent studies… older people with more psychological resources had ‘younger’ T cells,” Segerstrom said.
poor health behaviors
People in the study were asked questions about their levels of social stress, which included “stressful life events, chronic stress, everyday discrimination and lifetime discrimination,” Klopack said. His responses were then compared to the levels of T cells found in his blood tests.
“This is the first time that detailed information on immune cells has been collected in a large national survey,” Klopack said. “We found that older adults with low proportions of naïve cells and high proportions of older T cells have an older immune system.”
The study found that the association between stressful life events and fewer naive T cells remained strong even after controlling for education, smoking, drinking, weight, and race/ethnicity, Klopack said.
However, when poor diet and lack of exercise were taken into account, part of the connection between social stress levels and an aging immune system disappeared.
That finding indicates that how much our immune system ages when we’re stressed is within our control, Klopack said.
How stress affects the brain
As stress hormones flood the body, the brain’s neural circuitry changes, affecting our ability to think and make decisions, experts say. Anxiety increases and mood may change. All of these neurological changes affect the entire body, including our autonomic, metabolic, and immune systems.
McEwen, who made the landmark discovery in 1968 that the brain’s hippocampus can be modified by stress hormones such as cortisol, passed away in 2020 after 54 years of research in neuroendocrinology at Rockefeller University in New York City.
“Being ‘stressed’ can also cause us to stop seeing friends, take time off from work, or reduce our participation in regular physical activity when, for example, we sit in front of a computer and try to get outside. from under the burden of too much to do,” McEwen wrote.