These hormones are designed to protect you, and at first, they do. But over the long haul, continuous exposure to stress hormones can weaken your body and lead to health problems. Initially, stress hormones boost the protective powers of the immune system, but over time, they actually blunt the immune response. Research has demonstrated that people who endure chronic stress have low levels of disease-fighting white blood cells, making them more susceptible to colds and other common infections. In a study at Ohio State University, scientists found that the wounds of patients with high stress levels took an average of nine days longer to heal than similar wounds of patients who were not stressed.
Most experts now agree that stress is linked to cancer.
While there's no proof that stress causes cancer, there's plenty of evidence to support the notion that it influences the progression of the disease. Several studies have shown that emotional support not only enhances the well being of cancer patients, it also prolongs their lives. In a study of women with terminal breast cancer, those who participated in support programs lived twice as long as those did not. Stress can make you forgetful. Chronic exposure to stress hormones accelerates degenerative changes in the brain that lead to memory loss.