Stress do you think it was a factor in getting BC?

AllyJay

From what I gather, much research has been done regarding stress and cancer, as well as stress and auto immune diseases, and thus immunity as a whole. The concensus seems to be no. Much of the links, (according to the researchers) is anecdotal and so not proved by this, that and the next study. The links do not seem to be direct. I guess one could say that ninety percent of unwed girls who fell pregnant in the 1970's often wore blue jeans, and so ipso facto, the blue jeans were responsible. Not so, obviously, it was just that a lot of girls who happened to be sexually active, wore them. I think that we modern women (and men too), live with a huge amount of stress. Most of us are diagnosed with cancer later rather than earlier, and I think that for most of us, by the time we hit forty, have had some major stress event in our lives. How would you calibrate stress?  A years or decades long low level grumble of stress, versus a stress free life then rudely interrupted by a major stress event? Which trumps which? In my case, shitloads of both, and I have three distinct autoimmune diseases, and cancer. Was it the five years in a children's home from a baby, the seventeen schools I was dragged around when my mother remarried. Was it my stepfather (we won't even go there!!!). Was it a forced adoption forty two years ago, and the deep trauma that I've lived with each and every day? Was it the sudden death of my beloved brother in '96? Was it out families move to the other side of the world (here). Was it nursing my MIL through terminal bowel cancer? Was it my husband having a catastrophic heart attack in the car ten years ago? (He survived, yet another story).Who knows...if so which one or combination of which and when was it triggered? In childhood, where it incubated in some dark corner, only to emerge in middle age? If so, why the hell then? I'd taken on the world with the shitfest I was dealt with, and did it with the mid finger salute. I had survived all before, with a certain level of panache, then this whole rude awakening. I had thought someone would have had to bash me over the head with a hammer to kill me off, then lo and behold, my TITS decided to try and take on the job!!! Well I showed them!! Stress....bring it on...I stare it in the eye, then tell it to F..K off.

Zoffiel

Stress just isn't  that easy to quantify, is it? I'm constantly amazed by how much some people can survive and also how differently people react.

 I'm not very surprised that studies don't show a direct correlation at this stage. Years ago we were told that you couldn't catch cancer. Now young people are being vaccinated to help prevent some strains of the disease. Yes, I know, it isn't that simple, but it is a brave new world and we don't know what is around the corner when it comes to prevention and treatment.

Given how shit it generally makes us feel, being stressed to the max can't be helpful from a general health perspective. Unfortunately avoiding it is  not always possible, I only hope that I can learn how to stop churning about things that have happened in the past and find a way of not getting my knickers in a twist about things that haven't--and may never--happened.

I was lying on the floor at the end of my yoga class today surrounded by people who seem to be able to shut down and switch off. Me? Nah. It's like a hamster on a wheel inside my head--round and round, squeak, squeak, squeak. It's bloody deafening in there. If I was lying next to me in those situations I'd want to sit up and say "FFS, will you just stop that noise!"

Kombigirl

To me it sounds like a lot of us girls have had quite a large degree of stress before diagnosis.
I guess the only way to measure stress is the same way the medical profession measures pain. On a scale of 1 to 10.......

iserbrown

Zoffiel said:

Stress just isn't  that easy to quantify, is it? I'm constantly amazed by how much some people can survive and also how differently people react.

 

I was lying on the floor at the end of my yoga class today surrounded by people who seem to be able to shut down and switch off. Me? Nah. 

@Zoffiel

touché

I've decided that relaxing yoga doesn't cut it - some are into it - I guess I have too many cogs turning!

Afraser

Like everyone else, I have opinions but not so many facts. I think we can reasonably say that smoking heightens your chances of cancer, but if my grandfather is anything to go by, doesn't always cause it (decades of pipe smoking - lived to 93 - could have had lung, throat, mouth cancer but died as his heart stopped of old age). Alcohol, other carcinogens and stress may also be contributing factors, but again not causes in themselves.  We do know that cancer cells are opportunistic, metastasise and are not so easy to kill as we would like. So seems reasonable to me that the factors that lead one person to get cancer and another not to aren't one cause, but the hard to predict result of multiple contributing factors. What we can say is stress isn't good for us in general terms. Unfortunately it can take something like cancer to make some of us really accept that. I haven't  had a history of terrible things to bear, far from it, a very fortunate life, but it took me to post cancer counseling to realise that my idea of a normal pace of life was far from normal!!  But every lesson learned is worthwhile, whenever it happens. As is every extra year.