Re: journalistic cancers?-Stress Effect on Cancer Reply

["Harald Weiß, D-24147 Kiel" <weiss@ki.comcity.de>]

Ruth Weiner wrote:

> Could you provide an actual reference for a quantitative relationship
> between
> worrying about getting cancer and getting it?  I am skeptical about
> "stress" and
> I offer two pieces of evidence, albeit anecdotal.
>
> 1.  Stress does result in increased adrenalin secretion.  My late
> father did
> some basic medical research in endocrine disease, particularly of the
> adrenal
> (like adrenal hyperplasia) and found a number of readily observable
> severe
> effects of increased secretion of adrenal hormones (Cushing's
> syndrome,
> pseudohermaphroditism) but not excess cancers.
> 2.  People like me who DON'T (or didn't) worry enough about UV
> exposure to
> protect themselves are the ones who get UV-induced skin cancers.
> 3.  It is my impression that the habitual smokers who don't worry
> about smoking
> (which in fact reduces their stress) are far more at risk for lung and
> other
> cancers than the non-smokers who worry about second-hand smoke.
>
> I am perfectly willing to be shown, however.
>
>

as for 1.: Was the research specific for cancer and was the case number
big enough?

as for 2. and 3.: There is a big difference to the case of  low level
radiation: There is a real and measurable risk in these two examples,
which may hide a secondary risk, resulting from psychic effects. In
cases where a measurable primary risk doesn´t exist, the secondary
effect might be observable. So I´m looking forward for contributions on
this.

--
Harald Weiß                 weiss@ki.comcity.de
Preetzer Straße 263         Tel  +49 431 7859659
D-24147 Kiel                Fax  +49 431 7859658
..