Students who overload with difficult classes and extra-curricular activities may be risking more than physical exhaustion.
A new study conducted by Robert Lefkowitz, James B. Duke Professor of medicine and biochemistry and a Howard Hughes medical investigator at Duke University Medical Center, and Makoto Hara, postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Medicine, confirms the long-speculated belief that stress plays a part in the premature graying of hair.
In addition, Lefkowitz and Hara demonstrated that stress is responsible for DNA damage that can decrease the level of an important protein, p53, thus putting people at higher risk for cancer.
“[Hara] provided the first explanation in specific biochemical molecular terms of how chronic stress may actually cause DNA damage,” Lefkowitz said. “It’s been speculated but not specifically shown.”
Lefkowitz and Hara observed mice that they had injected with an “adrenaline-like compound” for about a month, because adrenaline is a common stress hormone, Hara said. The presence of the compound reduces the amount of p53, Lefkowitz said.
“The crux of what [Hara] showed is that when cells or animals are overstimulated by adrenaline-like molecules under chronic stress, that leads to an effect where the amount of p53 in the cells is lowered,” Lefkowitz said. “Without sufficient p53, the cell is not able to carry out the certain amount of functioning in terms of DNA repair.”
Beyond affirming that stress can make hair turn gray or can increase the risk of cancer, the study showed that DNA damage can occur in the testes, damaging the sperm and potentially increasing the likelihood of a miscarriage, as well as schizophrenia or autism in the offspring, Lefkowitz added.
Although the study only involved male mice, Hara said maternal stress could also harm the DNA of offspring.
Lefkowitz said he and Hara were drawn to the subject of stress because of its impact in the lives of many.
“Everybody is interested in stress,” Lefkowitz said. “The kind of stress you feel for months if not years, job-related or you’re in a bad marriage or you have some bad disease.”
He added that stress has visible results in high places.
“It’s often touted that stress can lead to gray hair or early graying of the hair, like President Obama and President Bush before him and President Clinton before him,” Lefkowitz said. “They all turned white.”
Although Duke students might not experience the stress of running the United States, Duke administrators acknowledge the risk of stress among students.
Students are conscious of the role stress plays in their lives, said Tom Szigethy, associate dean and director of the Duke Student Wellness Center. In a recent survey, 28 percent of students listed stress as the number one factor affecting their academic performance, Szigethy said.
“There’s definitely a pressure to be perfect and I think a lot of that is… self-inflicted because we’re all so high achieving,” senior Megan Riordan said. “It does become stressful when we have high standards in academics, extra-curriculars and also with social life.”
The Wellness Center offers many services for students who have similar experiences with stress. Szigethy said students can receive health coaching, during which they work to figure out what parts of their lives are causing them the most stress and which parts are more positive or therapeutic.
In addition to the services offered by the Wellness Center, students also have access to Duke’s Counseling and Psychological Services. CAPS provides workshops designed to help students cope with stress.
Brittany O’Malley, a program coordinator in the Wellness Center, said the Wellness Center has plans to partner with CAPS to provide more resources and programming to help students deal with stress.
“Our hope is that we can offer some other programming,” O’Malley said. “If students can’t get into [CAPS] workshops, we can have something else happening [where] they can go to learn similar skills.”
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