Immune System How Negative Emotions

¶ … Immune system [...] how negative emotions such as anger, depression, sadness, overthinking and anxiety can affect the immune system and cancer. Almost all forms of stress, such as anger, depression, sadness, and anxiety can negatively affect the immune system. Studies show this can lead to many other ailments and diseases, including cancer.

The immune system is a complex network that helps keep out bodies healthy and fit. The immune system manages our health by using two different types of defense, "cell-mediated immunity," which creates specific cells in our bodies that fight off invading germs and cells by destroying them via direct contact. The other defense is "humoral," which uses antibodies created by special cells that create proteins (the antibodies) that target weaknesses in the invading germs or cells and destroy them (Brown). The immune system is complicated, but it is also vulnerable to changes and stresses in the body. Stress is a stimulus that can trigger one or both of these reactions in the immune system, and that can be dangerous. In cases of autoimmune diseases, such as HIV / AIDS, the immune system goes haywire and attacks healthy cells in the body.

We all know that stress is a part of everyday life, and it is often difficult to manage. Anger, anxiety, depression, overthinking, and sadness are difficult to deal with, but if we continue to have these feelings of stress and anxiety, they can lead to changes in our body that can be much more harmful. A doctor notes, "Stress is a part of everyday life, and chronic stress is known to weaken the immune system, often leading to chronic diseases and increased levels of infection" (Brown). In fact, some studies show that severe stress can affect the immune system so dramatically that it can be deadly. Another article notes, "For reasons researchers don't fully understand, social stress intensified the immune system's response to a compound called lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which stimulates immune cells to react as if they were fighting an infection" ("Social Stress May Cause" 9). To cause the immune system to react so violently, the stress must be intense, but this indicates that severe stress can permanently harm the body via the immune system. It can leave the body open to attack by illness and disease, and the immune system will be weakened by attempting to control an enemy who does not really exist.

The study discussed in this article found that the immune system can create inflammation that damages organs in test animals, leaving permanent and costly damage. In fact, some of the mice in the test went into toxic shock and died as a result of the immune system's overreaction to stress (("Social Stress May Cause" 9). Dr. Brown goes on to clarify the immune system's response in these stressful situations. She notes, "In chronic-stress situations, the immune effector cells are constantly being stimulated for battle but they never encounter a pathogen. Because the cells are activated and easy to stimulate further into a large-scale immune response, they may mistakenly attack the organism's own tissues" (Brown). Thus, continued chronic stress can lead to a variety of health issues, and one of those is cancer, because the weakened immune system cannot fight off the cancerous cells, allowing them to grow more rapidly and unchecked.

This build up of the immune system to chronic stress can also lead to many other conditions, such as tolerance and dependency on many types of drugs. For example, a person under chronic stress who relies on aspirin or other pain relievers may develop a tolerance to the drugs, requiring more drugs to gain the same affect as fewer drug dosages before. Thus, the immune system in high gear can build up tolerances to drugs and other medications in its continued effort to protect the body and fight stress and anxiety. This is also dangerous, because the patient must take more drugs to gain the same result, and some drugs may simply become useless, leading the patient to need new drugs, or perhaps to a situation where no drugs will work against the problem. Continued stress, then, can lead to a wide variety of health problems, all concerning how the immune system reacts and what it does to manage the body in times of stress.