Stress reduces fertility in women
October 1, 2018
Science Daily/Boston University School of Medicine
In North America, 20 to 25 percent of women and 18 to 21 percent of men of reproductive age report daily psychological stress. Although previous research has suggested that stress can decrease the odds of conception, few studies have examined this association among couples from the general population. Now, a new study finds higher levels of stress are associated with lower odds of conception for women, but not for men.
Now, a new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researchers finds higher levels of stress are associated with lower odds of conception for women, but not for men.
The study was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
"Although this study does not definitely prove that stress causes infertility, it does provide evidence supporting the integration of mental health care in preconception guidance and care," says BUSPH doctoral student Amelia Wesselink, the study's lead author.
The researchers used data from the Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO), an ongoing preconception cohort of North American pregnancy planners that follows couples for 12 months or until pregnancy, whichever comes first. For the new study, the researchers followed 4,769 women and 1,272 men who did not have a history of infertility and had not been trying to conceive for more than six menstrual cycles.
The researchers measured perceived stress using the 10-item version of the perceived stress scale (PSS), which is designed to assess how unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overwhelming an individual finds their life circumstances. The items referred to the past month, with five response choices ranging from 0 (never) to 4 (very often), up to a total of 40, with a higher total score indicating a higher level of perceived stress. Both partners completed the PSS at baseline, and women also completed the PSS at each bi-monthly PRESTO follow-up. The baseline questionnaires also included a range of demographic and behavioral factors, including race/ethnicity, household income, diet, sleep, and frequency of intercourse.
On average, baseline PSS scores were about 1 point higher among women than men, and the average follow-up PSS scores among women remained fairly constant over the 12 months that they participated in the study.
The researchers found women with PSS scores of at least 25 were 13 percent less likely to conceive than women with PSS scores under 10. This association was stronger among women who had been trying to conceive for no more than two menstrual cycles before joining PRESTO than among women who had been trying for three or more cycles before enrolling. The association was also stronger among women under 35 years old.
The researchers found that, if the link between higher levels of stress and lower odds of conception is a causal association, a small proportion of that association could be due to decreased intercourse frequency and increased menstrual cycle irregularity.
The researchers did not find an association between men's PSS score and the likelihood of conceiving. However, couples in the study were about 25 percent less likely to conceive when the man's PSS score was under 10 and the women's was 20 or higher. The authors wrote that this is the first study to suggest that "partner stress discordance" may affect the likelihood of conception, although the finding was imprecise and speculative.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181001171207.htm
Positive well-being to higher telomerase: Psychological changes from meditation training linked to cellular health
November 4, 2010
Science Daily/University of California - Davis
Positive psychological changes that occur during meditation training are associated with greater telomerase activity, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of California, San Francisco. The study is the first to link positive well-being to higher telomerase, an enzyme important for the long-term health of cells in the body.
The effect appears to be attributable to psychological changes that increase a person's ability to cope with stress and maintain feelings of well-being.
"We have found that meditation promotes positive psychological changes, and that meditators showing the greatest improvement on various psychological measures had the highest levels of telomerase," said Clifford Saron, associate research scientist at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain.
"The take-home message from this work is not that meditation directly increases telomerase activity and therefore a person's health and longevity," Saron said. "Rather, meditation may improve a person's psychological well-being and in turn these changes are related to telomerase activity in immune cells, which has the potential to promote longevity in those cells. Activities that increase a person's sense of well-being may have a profound effect on the most fundamental aspects of their physiology."
The study, with UC Davis postdoctoral scholar Tonya Jacobs as lead author, was published online Oct. 29 in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology and will soon appear in print. It is a product of the UC Davis-based Shamatha Project, led by Saron, one of the first long-term, detailed, matched control-group studies of the effects of intensive meditation training on mind and body.
"This work is among the first to show a relation between positive psychological change and telomerase activity. Because the finding is new, it should serve to inspire future studies to replicate and extend what we found," Jacobs said.
Elizabeth Blackburn, professor of biology and physiology at UCSF, is a co-author of the paper. Blackburn shared the 2009 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for discovering telomeres and telomerase. Other co-authors include UCSF colleagues Elissa Epel, associate professor of psychiatry; assistant research biochemist Jue Lin; and Owen Wolkowitz, professor of psychiatry.
Telomeres are sequences of DNA at the end of chromosomes that tend to get shorter every time a cell divides. When telomeres drop below a critical length, the cell can no longer divide properly and eventually dies.
Telomerase is an enzyme that can rebuild and lengthen telomeres. Other studies suggest that telomerase activity may be a link between psychological stress and physical health.
The research team measured telomerase activity in participants in the Shamatha Project at the end of a three-month intensive meditation retreat.
Telomerase activity was about one-third higher in the white blood cells of participants who had completed the retreat than in a matched group of controls.
The retreat participants also showed increases in such beneficial psychological qualities as perceived control (over one's life and surroundings), mindfulness (being able to observe one's experience in a nonreactive manner) and purpose in life (viewing one's life as meaningful, worthwhile and aligned with long-term goals and values). In addition, they experienced decreased neuroticism, or negative emotionality.
Using statistical modeling techniques, the researchers concluded that high telomerase activity was due to the beneficial effects of meditation on perceived control and neuroticism, which in turn were due to changes in mindfulness and sense of purpose.
The Shamatha Project is the most comprehensive longitudinal study of intensive meditation yet undertaken.
The intensive meditation retreat took place at the Shambhala Mountain Center in Red Feather Lakes, Colo. The study included 30 participants each in the retreat and control groups. Participants received ongoing instruction in meditation techniques from Buddhist scholar, author and teacher B. Alan Wallace of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. They attended group meditation sessions twice a day and engaged in individual practice for about six hours a day.
A control group of 30 people matched for age, sex, education, ethnicity and meditation experience was assessed at the same time and in the same place, but did not otherwise attend meditation training at that time.
The Shamatha Project has drawn the attention of scientists and Buddhist scholars alike, including the Dalai Lama, who has endorsed the project.
Saron and his colleagues are now analyzing and publishing other findings from the project. In a paper published this summer in Psychological Science, Katherine MacLean, a recent UC Davis Ph.D. graduate now at Johns Hopkins University, reported that meditators were better at making fine visual distinctions and sustaining attention over a long period.
The group's next research article, currently in press in the journal Emotion, will describe a meditation-related reduction in impulsive reactions, which was linked in turn to enhancement in positive psychological functioning. UC Davis postdoctoral researcher Baljinder Sahdra is the lead author on that paper.
Additional co-authors on the current paper are: UC Davis graduate students Stephen Aichele, Anthony Zanesco and Brandon King; Sahdra, Associate Professor Emilio Ferrer and Distinguished Professor Phillip Shaver from the UC Davis Department of Psychology; consulting scientist Erika Rosenberg from the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain; and from UC Irvine, graduate student David Bridwell of the Department of Cognitive Science.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101103171642.htm
Women in mostly male workplaces exhibit psychological stress response
August 24, 2015
Science Daily/Indiana University
Today's workforce is highly sex-segregated -- for example, most elementary school teachers are women, while most chemistry professors are men. Researchers examine one important consequence of this occupational sex segregation: the stress exposure of women working in highly male-dominated occupations.
"We find that such women are more likely to experience exposure to high levels of interpersonal, workplace stressors," Manago said.
Previous research has shown that women working in male-dominated occupations face particular challenges. They encounter social isolation, performance pressures, sexual harassment, obstacles to mobility, moments of both high visibility and invisibility, co-workers' doubts about their competence, and low levels of workplace social support. Chronic exposure to these types of social stressors is known to cause vulnerability to disease and mortality through dysregulation of the human body's stress response.
Manago and Taylor measure whether women in occupations that were made up of 85 percent or more men, also known as "token" women, show such dysregulation by analyzing their daily cortisol patterns. Cortisol is a stress hormone that naturally fluctuates through the day, but people with high levels of interpersonal stress exposure have different patterns of fluctuation than people exposed to more average levels of stress.
"We find that women in male-dominated occupations have less healthy, or 'dysregulated,' patterns of cortisol throughout the day," Manago said. "We use nationally representative data, the MIDUS National Study of Daily Experiences, which allow us to assess women's cortisol profiles in workers across the United States.
"We also use statistical techniques to account for individuals' occupational and individual-level characteristics, allowing us to be more confident that the dysregulation of cortisol profiles we observe is due to the negative working conditions of token women, and not their own personal characteristics nor the characteristics of their occupations."
Previous work has shown that women in male-dominated occupations encounter difficult and negative workplace climates. And previous researchers have hypothesized that exposure to such difficult and negative workplace climates can expose these women to chronic stress. The IU research is the first to demonstrate that such negative workplace climates can be expressed in these women's bodies and can, in fact, dysregulate their stress response, potentially for years after the exposure to the stressful workplace climate.
"Our findings are especially important because dysregulated cortisol profiles are associated with negative health outcomes," Taylor said. "Thus, our project provides evidence that the negative workplace social climates encountered by women in male-dominated occupations may be linked to later negative health outcomes for these women."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150824130459.htm
Association between stress levels, skin problems in college students
November 23, 2015
Science Daily/Temple University Health System
College is a stressful time in the lives of students, and a new study has found that heightened levels of psychological stress are associated with skin complaints.The study aimed to assess the relationship between perceived psychological stress and the prevalence of various skin symptoms in a large, randomly selected sample of undergraduate students.
The study, published by the international, peer-reviewed journal Acta Dermato-Venereologica aimed to assess the relationship between perceived psychological stress and the prevalence of various skin symptoms in a large, randomly selected sample of undergraduate students. "Previous studies have demonstrated an association between stress and skin symptoms, but those studies relied on small patient samples, did not use standardized tools, are anecdotal in nature, or focused their analyses on a single skin disease," says Gil Yosopovitch, MD, Chair of the Department of Dermatology at LKSOM, Director of the Temple Itch Center, and corresponding author of the study.
The questionnaire-based, cross-sectional study was conducted at Temple University during the 2014 fall semester. Five thousand undergraduate students were invited to participate in a web-based survey in which they reported their perceived psychological stress and any skin complaints. Four hundred twenty-two students were included in the final sample size.
Respondents were divided into groupings labeled as low stress, moderate stress and high stress. Compared to low stress subjects, the high stress group suffered significantly more often from pruritus (itchy skin); alopecia (hair loss); oily, waxy or flaky patches on the scalp; hyperhidrosis (troublesome sweating); scaly skin; onychophagia (nail biting); itchy rash on hands; and trichotillomania (hair pulling). There was no association between perceived psychological stress levels and the presence of pimples, dry/sore rash, warts and other rashes on the face.
Despite study limitations (e.g., low response rate, absence of physical assessment of respondents), Dr. Yosipovitch says the results are important for dermatologists who treat undergraduate-aged patients. "Our findings highlight the need for health care/dermatology providers to ask these patients about their perceived levels of psychological stress. Disease flare or exacerbation while on treatment in the setting of increased stress may not necessarily reflect treatment failure." Dr. Yosipovitch adds, "These findings further suggest that non-pharmacologic therapeutic interventions should be considered for patients presenting with both skin conditions and heightened levels of psychological stress."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151123202212.htm