This title probably doesn’t surprise you, but now there is scientific evidence…right down to the cellular level. A study coming out of the University of California-San Francisco compared biological mothers of chronically ill children to those of healthy children. The finding was that chronic stress, and the perception of life stress significant impact on three biological factors -- the length of telomeres, the activity of telomerase, and levels of oxidative stress -- in immune system cells known as peripheral blood mononucleocytes, in healthy premenopausal women.

What are telomeres, you ask? Well the report explains:

Telomeres are DNA-protein complexes that cap the ends of chromosomes and promote genetic stability. Each time a cell divides, a portion of telomeric DNA dwindles away, and after many rounds of cell division, so much telomeric DNA has diminished that the aged cell stops dividing. Thus, telomeres play a critical role in determining the number of times a cell divides, its health, and its life span. These factors, in turn, affect the health of the tissues that cells form. Telomerase is an enzyme that replenishes a portion of telomeres with each round of cell division, and protects telomeres. Oxidative stress, which causes DNA damage, has been shown to hasten the shortening of telomeres in cell culture.

So, in English, what does this mean? It means that the more chronic stress you’re under, the more oxidative stress occurs to damage your cells. Many of these cells are immune cells, so your immune system is compromised. We recognize this anecdotally, watching the family caretakers of cancer patients and others get diseases or die pre-maturely. We “know” it’s stress-related. But now researchers have isolated the mechanics of this.

That provides hope that someday there may be targeted ways to intervene. Further research is examining whether stress-reduction interventions are increasing the telmorase activity or the telomere length – activities such as yoga and meditation.

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