When You Have Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, Stress Matters

Unfortunately, stress and cancer go hand in hand.Finding out that you have cancercan lead to a variety of feelings. Naturally, some patients fear illness and suffering, many will have to deal with financial problems, and some will be stressed byphysical discomfort from treatmentor the cancer itself. How does this stress impact your health and the progression of the disease? Can stress make cancer worse?

Researchers fromOhio State Universityattempted to answer this question. In their study, 96 CLL patients responded to a survey designed to measure their levels of cancer-related stress. They were asked questions about how intrusive their cancer-related thoughts were, how often they tried to stop thinking about it, and how often they felt jumpy or easily startled.

这n the researchers looked at data from blood samples and calculated the measurement of healthy and malignant cells. This measurement is called the absolute lymphocyte count, and is often used as a marker of disease severity. Researchers also measured the levels of eightcytokines– proteins that are part of the body’s immune response and that can create unhealthy levels of inflammation.

这resultsshowed that patients who reported more stress had more circulating malignant cells and higher levels of three different cytokines than those who reported lower levels of stress.

这sefindingspersisted even when researches took several other factors into the account including: gender, the number of prior treatments, and the presence of a genetic marker that is associated with a form of CLL that is harder to treat. Even so, higher levels of stress meant more malignant cells.

这association between higher levels of stress and more malignancy means that the implications of stress on cancer patients should not be overlooked. More research needs to be done to clearly identify the path from stress to immune response to inflammation that leads to the cancer’s proliferation.

Newly diagnosed patients should beassessedthroughout treatment to determine how much stress they are experiencing and if they have symptoms ofanxietyor沮丧. If so, they should be referred to mental health practitioners for treatment.

这American Society of Clinical Oncologists（ASCO）指出，虽然压力不直接导致癌症，但它可以削弱免疫系统并导致其他健康问题。为了减少压力，他们建议要求帮助，优先考虑任务，了解您的限制，避免调度冲突，将任务分解为更小的步骤，专注于您可以控制的内容，并获得财务问题的帮助。

癌症诊断通常需要生活方式改变，并且在考虑照顾您的健康时，您不应该忽视压力作为一个因素。这American Cancer Societyrecommends patients express their fears and concerns to their medical providers, and says that many symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress can be alleviated with the help of medication, support groups andpsychotherapy.