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CATEGORIES OF REPORTED STRESSFUL EVENTS.
Event. No. of Times Reported
1. Illness or problems with close Family Member .........................107
2. Job Stress .......................................................................................54
3. Events related to home or car (theft/repair) ................................52
4. Sudden personal discomfort (not related to MS) ...................... *52
5. Death of distant Relative/Friend ..................................................35
6. Financial problems ........................................................................31
7. Death of close Family Member ....................................................29
8. Illness or problems with distant Relative/Friend ......................... 28
9. Illness/death of pet .......................................................................27
10. Problems in relationship/marriage .............................................. 24
11. Stress related to Holiday ..............................................................18
*Encompasses pain (gastric, dental etc), physical trauma,
minor surgery, occurrence of sudden negative emotions.
Discussion.
In patients with Multiple Sclerosis the experience of at least one stressful event during a period of four weeks was associated with double the risk of an exacerbation within the following week.
The mechanism behind increased stress and the induction of inflammatory activity in a disease such as MS is not yet fully understood.
Conclusion.
Stressful events were associated with increased exacerbations in relapsing remitting MS.
This association was independent of the triggering effect of infections or exacerbations of MS.
Stress.
Is it an adaptive response, mediated by individual characteristics and / or psychological processes, that is a consequence of any external action, event or situation that might place a physical and / or psychological demands upon a person
Or is it that external circumstances do not have any intrinsic capacity to produce stress, but instead their effect is mediated by the individual's perceptions, capacities, and understanding.
Stress, however caused may lead to alarm, resistance to alarm rises within you leading to exhaustion due to the effort of adapting to the stress or fighting against it.
Whatever the reason stress will lead you down the path to;
Emotional exhaustion ~ Depersonalisation ~ Reduced sense of personal accomplishment, you may experience some or all of these emotions.
Avoid stress like the plague -
Chronic Stress May Worsen Multiple Sclerosis
Animal study links interleukin-
Chronic stress releases cytokines that may exacerbate central nervous system infections and neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis, according to animal research presented this week at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco, Calif.
Mary W. Meagher, Ph.D., of Texas A&M University in College Station, and colleagues subjected mice to social stress and Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus infection, which causes demyelination similar to human multiple sclerosis.
The researchers found that the stressed mice had higher levels of interleukin-
"This paper provides evidence that blocking the stress-
Source: Modern Medicine © 2007 Advanstar Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. (19/08/07)
The following extracts are taken from the British Medical Journal, Volume 327, September 2003. “Self reported stressful life events and exacerbations in Multiple Sclerosis prospective study (abridged version).
This study was part of the Rotterdam study conducted between July 1997 & December 1999.
Objective:
To study the relation between self-
Participants:
Patients aged between 18-
Main outcome measure:
The risk of increased disease activity as measured by the occurrence of exacerbations after weeks with stressful events.