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Aging News & Information
Older People Who Go to Bed Lonely Get Stress Hormone
Boost Next Morning
Cortisol says its time to rev up to deal with
loneliness, other negative experiences
May 3, 2007 - A rare look at the physiological,
social and emotional dynamics of day-to-day experiences in real-life
settings shows that when older adults go to bed lonely, sad or
overwhelmed, they have elevated levels of cortisol - a stress hormone
linked to depression, obesity and other health problems - shortly after
waking the next morning.
Elevated levels of cortisol actually cue the body
on a day-to-day basis that it is time to rev up to deal with loneliness
and other negative experiences, according to Northwestern University's
Emma K. Adam, the lead investigator of the study.
"You've gone to bed with loneliness, sadness,
feelings of being overwhelmed, then along comes a boost of hormones in
the morning to give you the energy you need to meet the demands of the
day," said Adam, assistant professor of education and social policy and
faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research.
The morning cortisol boost could help adults who
went to bed with troubled or overwhelming feelings go out in the world
the next day and have the types of positive social experiences that help
regulate hormone levels, she said.
Adam also is a faculty fellow at C2S: The Center on
Social Disparities and Health. C2S is a new center within the Institute
for Policy Research that is reaching across Northwestern's two campuses
and a number of social, life and biomedical disciplines to offer a 21st
century look at how biological, social and cultural dynamics intersect
and affect health throughout the life span.
Cortisol is often characterized as a negative
hormone because of evidence, mostly in animal models, that long-term
elevations could be potentially harmful to physical health. But in the
short term the stress hormone is adaptive and helpful, according to
Adam.
"Cortisol helps us respond to stressful experiences
and do something about them," she said. "It is necessary for survival --
fluctuations in this hormone assist us in meeting the changing demands
we face in our daily lives."
The first of its type, the study shows that it is
not just on average that people who have more negative emotions have
higher levels of cortisol. Rather, with its detailed and intricate
methodology, the study shows a sensitive day-to-day dance between
experience and cortisol. Experience influences stress hormones, and
stress hormones influence experience, the study shows.
"Cortisol responds to and interacts with our daily
experiences in subtle and important ways," Adam concluded.
Cortisol levels are generally high immediately upon
waking, increase in the first 30 minutes after waking and then decline
to low values at bedtime.
Adam, with her colleagues John T. Cacioppo and
Louise C. Hawkley at the University of Chicago, and Brigitte M. Kudielka
from the University of Trier, Germany, showed that changes in this
pattern from one day to the next are closely interwoven with changes in
daily experiences.
The study, based on data from the Chicago Health,
Aging, and Social Relations Study (CHASRS) at the University of Chicago
includes 156 older adults living in Cook County who were born between
1935 and 1952 and represent a range of socioeconomic classes.
Their cortisol levels were measured from small
samples of saliva provided three times a day for three consecutive days.
Study participants reported their feelings each night in a diary, and
researchers looked at whether cortisol levels on a particular day were
predicted by experiences the day before or were predictive of
experiences that same day.
In addition to noting that loneliness the night
before predicted higher cortisol the next morning, Adam and colleagues
found that people who experience anger throughout the day have higher
bedtime levels of cortisol and flatter overall levels of the stress
hormone, typically considered a risk factor for disorder. "High levels
of cortisol in the evening are a kind of biological signature of a bad
day," Adam noted.
The study also provided evidence that, in addition
to simply being at the mercy of your daily experiences, cortisol also
plays a role in influencing them. Individuals with lower levels of
cortisol in the morning experienced greater fatigue during the day, a
result with potential implications for understanding chronic fatigue.
In all of her work, Adam says she is interested in
how people's changing social environments get under the skin to
influence their biology and health.
"Stress systems are designed to translate social
experience into biological action," she said.
"They are designed to be a conduit from the outside
world to our internal worlds so that we can better respond to our social
context. The overarching question of my studies of these systems in a
variety of contexts is whether overuse of these systems plays a role in
disease outcomes."
Editors Notes:
The study, "Day-to-day experience-cortisol
dynamics," will be published online the week of Oct. 30, 2006, by the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Evidence Mounts of Dire Consequence of Loneliness for Older Americans
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Citizens Have Poor Memories ... Greater resistance to blood flow
in lonley people compared to non-lonely idnvidiauls ...
www.seniorjournal.com/NEWS/Aging/6-03-28-EvidenceMounts.htm |
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