Nothing is worse than a boss you can’t stand.  You hate going to work, avoid them at every cost and probably neglect doing your job very well just to spite them.  Well who knew that your terrible boss is actually affecting your health too.  “A stressful workplace can dramatically change gene expression in our immune system and significantly impact our health, say Ohio State University scientists in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” (Parker).

Co-author John Sheridan, explains that while the connection between Mind-body health is well established, the science understandings behind it are not totally clear.  The new study he is conducting focuses on stress associated with social defeat and how the brain and body change in ways that can affect behavior and health.

The experiments contain a group of mice that undergo a series of human-type stress situations.  “For example, male mice living together are given time to establish a hierarchy, and then an aggressive male is added to the group for two hours at a time. This elicits a “fight or flight” response in the resident mice as they are repeatedly defeated by the intruder.”  After various experiments, the circulating blood cells are compared between mice that experienced social defeat stress and the control mice.  The comparison showed that “the stressed mice had an average fourfold increase in the frequency of immune cells in their blood and spleen compared to the normal mice.”  Genome wide analysis of these cells that went to the spleen in the stressed mice showed that close to 3,000 genes were expressed at different levels- some high and some low when compared to the control mice.

Immune cells typically respond to a pathogen by necessary inflammation.  But when the inflammation gets excessive and is no longer healing or protecting, the condition can lead to an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity to name a few.  Nicole Powell, another co-researcher, says that this study highlights how psychology directly effects biology.  The researchers in the study conclude that the increased disease risks are directly related to chronic stress.  Although these findings were done on mice, they are perfectly applicable to humans because the nervous system cells are so similar.  “There is a stress-induced alteration in the bone marrow in both our mouse model and in chronically stressed humans that selects for a cell that’s going to be pro-inflammatory. So what this suggests is that if you’re working for a really bad boss over a long period of time, that experience may play out at the level of gene expression in your immune system.” (Sheridan)

Besides just having a bad boss, this study could be applied to many social situations.  Teenagers in high school go through these types of stresses everyday as well as athletes and performers.  Although this study is relating its findings to that of a terrible boss I think it could easily be applied else where.  There are so many third variables that could occur in this type of testing that may not apply when testing mice.  If a teenager has a bad boss at their part time job, fights with their friends at school, and has an unstable home life, how much does their risk rise? I think the way this study was conducted was accurate and I believe a lot of what they’re saying to be true but there are definitely other factors to consider. Stress is everywhere is our lives today but by eliminating it in a few areas you may just save your life.

www.scienceagogo.com/news/20131005192722data_trunc_sys.shtml

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