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3 Little Known Stressors Killing Menand the Women Who Love Them
ByJed Diamond
Jed Diamond, Ph.D. has been a health-care professional for more than 40 years. He is theauthor of 10 books, including
and
Mr. Mean: Saving Your Relationship from the Irritable Male Syndrome.
He offers counseling to men, women, and couples in his office in California or byphone with people throughout the U.S. and around the world. To receive a Free E-book on
Men‟s Health and a free subscription to my e
-newsletter go tohttp://facebook.com/menalivenow.If you enjoy his articles, please subscribe. I write toeveryone who joins my tribe of followers.
It‟s no secret that stress levels are on the rise.
Much of our present-day stressinvolves our minds going around and around worrying about what could happen.
“Stress—or as I like to think of it, the mind that‟s running on overdrive—
is now
considered to be a leading factor in numerous illnesses,” says Wood
son Merrell, MD,chairman of the Department of Integrative Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center andauthor of
The Source
. “By some estimates, up to 80 percent of all illnesses are stressinduced.”
Although stress impacts everyone, men are particularly vulnerable. We see that inthe fact that men die sooner and live sicker than do women. Statistics from the NationalCenter for Disease Control and Prevention show that men have a higher death rate forthe ten leading causes of death (numbers are deaths per 100,000 population):These statistics show, for instance, that for every 100 women who die of heartdisease 150 men die. For every 100 women who commit suicide 400 men killthemselves and for every 100 women who are killed in a homicide 390 men are killed.Since we know that stress is implicated in most causes of death, what are the mostcommon stressors? We often think of such things as time pressures, unhealthylifestyles, traffic jams, and financial worries. But major new research reported by
, indicates that more important stressors are ones weprobably are not even aware exist.The Three Killer Stressors Few People Know AboutIf we take a moment to think about it, the stress that impacts us the most stronglyhave to do with other people, particularly those who are close to us. Wilkinson and
Pickett say that “the most powerful sources of stress affecting health seem to fall intothree intensely social categories.”
1. Trauma experienced when we were children.2. Low social status.3. Lack of friends.Early Trauma Affects Health Years After It OccursThe Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study has demonstrated that childhood
experiences affect adult health decades after they first occur. The ACE Study is acollaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and
Kaiser Permanente‟s Health Appraisal Clinic in San Diego.
They found that childhoodabuse, neglect, and exposure to other adverse experiences are common. Almost two-thirds of study participants reported at least one ACE, and more than one in fivereported three or more.Further, it was found that each adverse childhood experience increased the risk ofhealth problems later in life. For instance, compared to people with an ACE score of 0,those with an ACE score of 4 or more were twice as likely to be smokers, 7 times morelikely to be alcoholic, 10 times more likely to have injected street drugs, and 12 timesmore likely to have attempted suicide.Low Social Status Is StressfulSally Dickerson and Margaret Kemeny, both psychologists at the U.C.L.A. found thatthe stressors that most impacted our health were ones that threatened our sense ofself-worth in the eyes of others. They collected findings from 208 published reports of
experiments in which people‟s cortisol (stress hormone) levels were measured while
they were exposed to an experimental stressor.They classified all the different kinds of stressors used in experiments and found that
“ta
sks that included a social-evaluative threat (such as threats to self-esteem or socialstatus), in which others could negatively judge performance, particularly when theoutcome of the performance was uncontrollable, provoked larger and more reliable
cortisol changes than stressors without these particular threats.”
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3 Little Known Stressors Killing Men and the Women Who Love Them
We know that stress is on the rise and it impacts our health in negative ways. But which stressors are the most dangerous? The answer may surprise you.
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