A January 2024 study by Ohio State University said,
“We were specifically examining people in midlife – a time that is critical to determine those who will experience accelerated aging. Stress is an important contributor to several negative health outcomes as we age,”
“There are many variables that influence metabolic syndrome, some we can’t modify, but others that we can. Everybody experiences stress,”
“And stress management is one modifiable factor that’s cost-effective as well as something people can do in their daily lives without having to get medical professionals involved.”
“There’s not much research that has looked at all three variables at one time,” said Jurgens, a psychology graduate student in Hayes’ lab. “There’s a lot of work that suggests stress is associated with inflammation, inflammation is associated with metabolic syndrome, and stress is associated with metabolic syndrome. But putting all those pieces together is rare.”
Inflammation composite scores were calculated using biomarkers that included the better-known IL-6 and C-reactive protein as well as E-selectin and ICAM-1, which help recruit white blood cells during inflammation, and fibrinogen, a protein essential to blood clot formation.
The statistical modeling showed that stress does indeed have a relationship with metabolic syndrome, and inflammation explained over half of that connection – 61.5%, to be exact.
“There is a small effect of perceived stress on metabolic syndrome, but inflammation explained a large proportion of that,”
“People think of stress as mental health, that it’s all psychological. It is not. There are real physical effects to having chronic stress,”
“It could be inflammation, it could be metabolic syndrome, or a number of things. This is another reminder of that.”