From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: misc.kids.breastfeeding,misc.kids.health,alt.health,sci.med,
	sci.med.nutrition
Subject: Re: New Autism Cases Level Off in California, Data Show
Date: 26 Jul 2005 13:35:37 -0700
Message-ID: <1122410137.232595.246080@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>

Happy Dog wrote:
> At what level of importance to you place lack of stress?  I've noticed that
> stressful situations and lack of sleep, two things I strenulously avoid,
> correlate with the number of minor infectious diseases, like colds, I
> suffer.  What about the big stuff?


COMMENT:

I simply don't know. There was once a lot of thought that stress and
corticosteroid production in general might be very bad and lead to a
lot of consequences of aging, but it turns out that dietarily
restricting animals (which is good for them) causes them a lot of
stress, and their stress steroids are through the roof (some of my own
work showed this). So having high stress hormones all the time can't be
all THAT bad for you, if you're a mouse.  Perhaps it gives humans heart
disease-- we would miss that in a mouse model.

I think in studies the amount of lifetime stress correlates probably
best with hippocampal degeneration and loss of memory (not necessarily
dementia, just pure memory loss). Don't remember which study that was,
though...  :)

Corticosteroids seem to make one much more vulnerable to viruses, but
most viruses are pretty benign. It's not like if you have more of them
you'll become fulnerable to worse pathogens. Don't know of any evidence
for that.

SBH