Chronic stress may increase the risk of skin cancer in those at high risk for the disease, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
The study found that mice exposed to stress and to cancer-causing excessive ultraviolet (UV) light developed skin cancer in less than half the time as mice that weren’t stressed.
The researchers subjected 40 mice to stress by exposing them to the scent of fox urine. The mice also received large amounts of UV light. One of the mice developed a skin tumor within eight weeks of testing. Non-stressed mice exposed to UV light began developing tumors 13 weeks later.
After 21 weeks of testing, 14 of the 40 stressed mice had at least one tumor, compared with two of the non-stressed mice.
“There’s a lot of evidence pointing to the negative effects of chronic stress, which dampens our immune system and impacts various aspects of our health,” study director Dr. Francisco Tausk, an associate professor of dermatology, said.
-Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology/Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, news release
Dr. Keith & Laurie Nemec comments on Chronic Stress May Raise Skin Cancer Risk:
This interesting study shows how stress decreases the life span of white blood cells, thus weakening your immune system. Also found was an accelerated aging of cells which increases risk of cancer, heart disease and most other diseases.
What is stress? It is an external force or concept/idea that has the power to destroy the wholeness of body, mind and emotions of a person.
The real issue is not about stress but how you perceive the situation. This was seen in the study that not all the caregivers of children with chronic illness fell into the high stress group. Why? Attitude, belief and faith.
Our attitude is how we see and react to life’s situations. The more we follow what God puts in our heart and the less we follow what the world system has filled our head with, the more we have the attitude of God. The greatest stressor in your life is not your job, your money, your disease, or your marriage. The greatest stressor is your choosing to believe the lies that your world-filled old mind has been speaking to you your whole life. The greatest comfort is seeing God’s plan behind everything in this life. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. This life journey is made up of tests and trails along the path.
When we come to one, we are called by God to overcome them in His strength, not ours, and to be transformed into His image and glory. Do you think the mother of the chronically ill child is stressed when she is offering her life to God as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to Him, and is she stressed when she is there loving her child every moment, just thanking God for the child’s blessing in her life. No, she only becomes stressed when she is filled with the ego, world-filled mind that compares and wants to be somewhere else than where she is. This is the definition of suffering; always wanted to be somewhere else than where you are. To close, think about this: is it better to have given and received love from a child with illness or never to have had the child at all?
Another example of how stress is a product of the mind and how you perceive life situations: I you were sitting in your house and a man knocked on the door and said your child just was run over by a car. If you believe his words, your heart rate would increase, your adrenal gland would start pumping out adrenaline, your emotions would skyrocket the tears would begin to flow. But, if you know that your child is in the next room playing you would dismiss his words as a lie and continue doing what you were doing with no change in your physical or mental emotional state.
What was the difference? KNOWING. The difference between perceiving life as a stress or not is KNOWING God is behind everything and He will not leave or forsake you, and that He will not ever put you in any situation that you cannot handle but will always leave a way out or up as you climb over the tests, trials and obstacles in your life on your journey into being transformed into His image and glory.
KNOWING is more powerful than believing and believing is more powerful than thinking.
