One thing about the pandemic, it forced us to pay attention to the connection between mental health and physical health. Even if you haven’t gotten COVID (yet), you’ve likely felt the emotional impacts of isolation, worry, and grief down to your very bones. That’s not “all in your head,” either: Science has continually confirmed that the health of our bodies and minds are inextricably intertwined. And now, a new study suggests that stress not only makes us more vulnerable to certain diseases, but it also actually ages our immune systems in a way that can make us more vulnerable to everything, The Washington Post reported.
The study, which was published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at the impact of stress on the age of immune system T-cells. The scientists specifically analyzed how five kinds of social stressors — stressful life events, chronic stress, everyday discrimination, lifetime discrimination, and life trauma — affected the presence of “naive T-cells” in 5,744 participants.
