Stress-Busting Help Comes From Hormone
Stress-Busting Help Comes From Hormone
Natural Increases in DHEA-S Can Help With Acute Stress
Aug. 2, 2004 -- Stressing out? A hormone produced by your own body could help you cope.
The hormone, dehydroepiandrosterone-S (DHEA-S), is produced by the adrenal glands, which also produces steroids and sex hormones. It is believed that DHEA-S is secreted in response to stress and impacts the body's response to a stressful situation. It could also enhance memory and decrease depression.
DHEA-S got its own stress test in a recent study by the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at the Veterans Affairs New England Healthcare System in West Haven, Conn.
Researchers took blood and saliva samples from 25 military personnel to measure the level of DHEA-S and another stress hormone, cortisol. The average age of the people who took part in the study was 25.
Participants also filled out a survey rating how in touch they felt with their environment or a dissociation symptoms survey.
Five days later the subjects went to a military survival school, where they endured stressful conditions including food and sleep deprivation and a 30-minute interrogation in a mock prisoner-of-war camp. Immediately after the interrogation, the participants gave a second round of blood and saliva samples and repeated the same survey.
The people who reported fewer symptoms and who performed best at their military tasks had "significantly higher" levels of the hormone DHEA-S compared with cortisol, say the researchers in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
That means that healthy people get a natural increase in DHEA-S levels while under acute stress, and that the ratio between DHEA-S and cortisol may show how protected someone is from stress' negative effects, say the researchers.
Youth is on the side of DHEA-S; it's one of the first hormones released at the start of puberty. The hormone's levels peak in people in their early to mid-20s and then decreases over time. By the time a person reaches 70 or 80 years old they have only about 20%-30% of their peak levels.
Would we fare better if we could boost our DHEA-S levels right before a stressful event? That's a question the researchers would like to see studied in future clinical trials. Meanwhile, take a deep breath and be glad your day-to-day stressors are probably nothing like those in this study.
SOURCE: News release, Journal of the American Medical Association/Archives.
Stress-Busting Help Comes From Hormone
Natural Increases in DHEA-S Can Help With Acute Stress
Aug. 2, 2004 -- Stressing out? A hormone produced by your own body could help you cope.
The hormone, dehydroepiandrosterone-S (DHEA-S), is produced by the adrenal glands, which also produces steroids and sex hormones. It is believed that DHEA-S is secreted in response to stress and impacts the body's response to a stressful situation. It could also enhance memory and decrease depression.
DHEA-S got its own stress test in a recent study by the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at the Veterans Affairs New England Healthcare System in West Haven, Conn.
Researchers took blood and saliva samples from 25 military personnel to measure the level of DHEA-S and another stress hormone, cortisol. The average age of the people who took part in the study was 25.
Participants also filled out a survey rating how in touch they felt with their environment or a dissociation symptoms survey.
Five days later the subjects went to a military survival school, where they endured stressful conditions including food and sleep deprivation and a 30-minute interrogation in a mock prisoner-of-war camp. Immediately after the interrogation, the participants gave a second round of blood and saliva samples and repeated the same survey.
The people who reported fewer symptoms and who performed best at their military tasks had "significantly higher" levels of the hormone DHEA-S compared with cortisol, say the researchers in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
That means that healthy people get a natural increase in DHEA-S levels while under acute stress, and that the ratio between DHEA-S and cortisol may show how protected someone is from stress' negative effects, say the researchers.
Youth is on the side of DHEA-S; it's one of the first hormones released at the start of puberty. The hormone's levels peak in people in their early to mid-20s and then decreases over time. By the time a person reaches 70 or 80 years old they have only about 20%-30% of their peak levels.
Would we fare better if we could boost our DHEA-S levels right before a stressful event? That's a question the researchers would like to see studied in future clinical trials. Meanwhile, take a deep breath and be glad your day-to-day stressors are probably nothing like those in this study.
SOURCE: News release, Journal of the American Medical Association/Archives.
