Research has shown that social environments can play an important role in cancer – for better or for worse. Most significant, isolation has been found to “worsen” cancer. This was found through cancer experiments done on mice. When the female mice were taken away from their mothers, their mammary gland tumors grew larger when statistically compared to tumors of more “contented” mice. Social isolation has also been found to have a positive correlation with death from several other chronic diseases. It has been known for a long time that psychological factors play a role in disease; however, this particular study may lead to actual improvements in treatments for cancer patients.
Psychological factors playing a role in disease growth and treatment has been apparent to me for a long time now. For instance, sunlight causes the brain to produce more serotonin, thus improving the persons overall mood. It isn’t a far stretch to say that this kind of treatment could help the body’s immune system and its ability to fight harder against disease. Therefore, it is evident that the opposite would also be true and taking away those things that produce “good” chemicals in the body, like social isolation, could cause the disease to get worse. It is good that researchers are finding out potential information that could lead to possible treatments for cancer.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8279425.stm
1 comment:
I think this is so interesting. I have no trouble at all believing it, because I am a psychology major and we are always talking about ways people are affected by things other than actual medicine. I guess now all that's left to do is to get cancer patients to have as much social interaction as possible.
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