It is already widely known that stress can bring about a lot of health problems, but a new study shows that stress can greatly increase the chances of cancer spreading within a patient's body. The results of this new study by Dr. Erica Sloan of the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Science and her team suggest that cancer can spread by as much as 6 times faster if a patient is subjected to a constant degree of stress.
Although Cancer.gov states that evidence supporting stress as a direct cause of cancer is considerably weak, this is not what the study by Sloan and her team is tackling. What is alarming about the results of their study is that it shows that abnormal stress levels can cause a faster spread of the deadly disease. Stress can also cause a wide array of cancer treatments to not work as well as they were intended to.
According to the Daily Mail, Dr. Sloan and her team of researchers refer to a body under stress as a "super highway' for the spread of deadly cancers. "Stress creates physical routes out of the tumor that provide a physical pathway for the cancer to spread," says Dr. Sloan. Aside from a patient's stress levels, the emotional stress of being diagnosed with such a life threatening disease and the physical toll of battling the cancer should be taken into account as well.
The research team has also come out with a statement saying that they are now testing a new drug known as Propranolol to see if this drug could act as a buffer and slow down the spread of cancer even if the patient is under stress. Clinical trials will soon begin to determine the effectiveness of this drug and hopefully it will be effective in slowing down the spread of cancer in the human body.
