Under Pressure: The Search for a Stress Vaccine

The power of this new view of stress — that our physical health is strongly linked to our emotional state — is that it connects a wide range of scientific observations, from the sociological to the molecular. On one hand, stress can be described as a cultural condition, a byproduct of a society that leaves some people in a permanent state of unease. But that feeling can also be measured in the blood and urine, quantified in terms of glucocorticoids and norepinephrine and adrenal hormones. And now we can see, with scary precision, the devastating cascade unleashed by these chemicals. The end result is that stress is finally being recognized as a critical risk factor, predicting an ever larger percentage of health outcomes.

To Sapolsky, the next step was obvious: Attack the condition head-on. In 2003, he proposed a vaccinelike treatment that protects people against stress. It’s a hugely ambitious attempt to combat a societal scourge at the level of our DNA. Although years of work remain, Sapolsky now insists that, given the public health consequences, it’s time to take the problem seriously, to move our treatments beyond talk therapy and Valium. “Sometimes it’s not enough just to tell people, ‘Jeez, you should really learn to relax,’” Sapolsky says. “If stress is half as bad for you as we currently think it is, then it’s time to stop treating the side effects. It’s time to go after stress itself.”

After that first trip in 1978, Sapolsky began spending every summer in Kenya. In the early 1980s, he happened upon a rare event in the baboon troop: The highest-ranking female and a low-ranking female gave birth to daughters just a few days apart. Sapolsky realized that these newcomers would allow him to compare the effects of social status on development. The first thing he noticed was that the high-ranking daughter hit every developmental landmark faster. She walked first, ate solid food earlier, and had far more interactions with other baboons. The lesson, Sapolsky says, is that “status comes with privileges,” and these privileges are present from the start of life.

Sapolsky describes a poignant scene that took place a few weeks after the births, when the newborns encountered each other for the first time. “They can barely get around, but they’re both so excited to see another baby,” he says. “And so the low-ranking kid goes wobbling over to say hi. But then, just as she gets near, the low-ranking mom grabs her daughter and drags her back. The poor kid has no idea what’s happened, but she’s just gotten her first lesson in the social hierarchy. The high-ranking kid is not somebody she can play with.”

www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/ff_stress_cure/all/1

Alert Webmaster & Moderators

0 of 0 (0%) readers agree with this message.  Hide votes     What is this?
How do you feel about this message?     Agree     Disagree       Hide this question