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How Stress Affects Your Immune System and Ways to Cope with it

How Stress Affects Your Immune System and Ways to Cope with it

How Stress Affects Your Immune System and Ways to Cope with it

Unfortunately, stress nowadays is pretty commonplace. As we follow social distancing practices, our work life, social life and home life are profoundly affected. Along with the obvious stress of potentially getting sick, the increased financial, work and social stress are challenging.

So what does stress do to our immune system? And are there ways we can help normalize our response to stress?

Immune response to acute stress

Generally, acute stress appears to increase inflammation. Some of the same molecules in the brain that signal the stress response also promote inflammation (Black 2002). This inflammatory response is measurable in the blood and saliva (Slavish 2015). It’s very likely that this inflammation is part of the reason long-term stress is a major contributing factor to most chronic diseases.

For example, one study exposed subjects to a public speaking and arithmetic challenge, a very reliable technique for inducing a strong stress response. Within just 10 minutes, NF-kB, an inflammatory signalling molecule increased by a whopping factor of 3.5 (Bierhaus 2003).

Does that mean there’s nothing we can do?

In a word, no. The research also shows that we have a significant measure of control over our body’s inflammatory response to stress. Self-compassion can help mitigate the effects while anger and anxiety appear to increase inflammation (Breines 2014, Barlow 2019, Moons 2015, Boylan 2015, Smith 2014, Michopoulus 2014). In addition, dietary strategies to reduce inflammation are known to help decrease disease as well (Veronese 2020).

Meditation and immune function

Mindfulness meditation has shown some potential benefits for lowering inflammation (Sanada 2020, Ng 2020). In one study, the inflammatory marker NF-kB mentioned earlier, had a 33% reduction in activity with mindfulness based stress reduction (Creswell 2012). In a separate study, just 12 minutes daily of a yogic style meditation reversed increased NF-kB inflammatory expression in stressed individuals (Black 2013).

Another marker of immune function, salivary IgA can indicate susceptibility to colds and flu. With a few weeks of training, individuals using an integrative meditation technique were shown to be able to significantly raise their salivary IgA after a stressful situation with 20 minutes of meditation (Fan 2010).

Compassion training may also have benefits for stress resiliency, although the research is preliminary. Loving Kindness Meditation and Compassion Meditation, both linked here with examples, have been shown to have potentially large effects sizes on stress and burnout in a study on nurses (Delaney 2018).

Diet and stress

While it’s easy to want to eat poorly when stressed, it may make things worse. One of the more consistent findings in dietary observational studies is that individuals that eat more fruits and vegetables appear to have lower self-reported stress (Algren 2018, Barrington 2012, Nguyen 2017, Richard 2015). A whole foods diet can yield a multitude of health benefits, potentially even stress reduction.

I know it can be challenging to eat healthy, especially when stressed. I crave comfort foods when my stress levels go up. However, there are ways to make healthy comfort foods: use whole grain products, make your own sauces from scratch, cut sugar in half and add stevia to make up the difference. Have fruit as a sweet treat rather than other processed desserts. Find foods that you enjoy that are healthy and turn to those. I love salmon. After a stressful day at work in Seattle, sometimes I’d swing by the local grocery store and buy some salmon as a treat for dinner.

It took me time to learn how to eat healthy in a way that I enjoy. However, once I figured out what I like, I don’t think I would be happy going back to eating a more processed food based diet.

With all of the stress we’re under, it’s important to incorporate strategies to help mitigate its effects. Working to find time for simple, daily mindfulness exercises and incorporating healthy food choices can both be strategies to reduce stress, improve immune function, and maintain a positive long-term outlook.

This article was written by contributing author Dr. Scott Buesing, a naturopathic doctor at The Refinery Integrated Wellness Center in Palm Desert. Dr. Scott's clinical experience includes working with patients with mental health conditions, along with more recent work in pain medicine. Dr. Buesing has positively impacted the lives of many through integrated medicine. For more information about his practice, see buesingnaturopathic.com.

4 years ago