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Anti-Aging Therapy
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Stress triggers high cholesterol
 
 30.11.2006
FOR some people, the body's reaction to stress may raise the odds of developing high cholesterol, new study results suggest.
Researchers in the UK found healthy middle aged adults whose cholesterol rose in response to a stressful task were more likely than their peers without this increase to have high cholesterol several years later.
It has been known that blood cholesterol can show a short lived rise in response to stress, study co-author Dr Andrew Steptoe said. The new findings, he said today, suggest these transient increases may predict long term elevations in cholesterol.
A number of studies have linked chronic stress to a higher risk of heart disease, and it's possible that stress-related changes in cholesterol contribute to this, said Dr Steptoe, who is based at University College London.
Dr Steptoe and colleague Lena Brydon reported the findings in the journal Health Psychology.
To see if stress-related spikes in cholesterol can have long range effects, the researchers followed 199 middle-aged adults for three years.
At the start of the study, participants performed two moderately stressful computer-based tasks, blood samples were taken before and after the tests to measure any changes in cholesterol levels. The men and women were then divided into three groups based on the extent of their cholesterol response.
Three years later, participants had their blood cholesterol measured again. Those in the group with the greatest cholesterol response to stress were the most likely to have high cholesterol.
Overall, 56 per cent had a total cholesterol level that surpassed the cut off for diagnosing high cholesterol, compared with only 16 per cent of the group whose cholesterol levels had been least affected by stress.
Even when the researchers weighed other factors such as age, body weight and smoking, the group with the highest stress response was 13 times more likely than the group with the lowest response to have high cholesterol three years later.
They were also four times more likely to have high levels of LDL cholesterol, the bad form that contributes to artery-clogging plaques. The findings suggest chronic stress can contribute to high cholesterol in some people, though the reason is unclear, according to Dr Steptoe and Ms Brydon.
One possibility they note is that changes in metabolism in response to stress ultimately cause the liver to boost production of LDL particles. There is also evidence stress can temporarily limit the body's clearance of cholesterol from the blood.
Dr Steptoe said it is possible that such effects could be modified if people changed their conscious reactions to stress.
Stress management, he said, has been shown to lower levels of the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine. Dr Steptoe said he is not aware of any studies that have tested whether the same is true of cholesterol levels.

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