that the tumour was malignant, and Michelle believes she knows why: stress. “It wasn’t until I shocked the hell out of my life that it changed,” she says. “I quit my job, without any income to go to…. My emotional state was horrible at the time. A lot of things hit me all at once, not only financial.” Michelle had a lumpectomy and was relieved to learn that her lymph glands were free of cancer. The surgery was followed by chemotherapy and radiation, but no physician ever asked her about what psychic stresses she might have suffered before the onset of her malignancy or what unresolved issues she had in her life.
Breast cancer patients often report that their doctors do not express an active interest in them as individuals or in the social and emotional context in which they live. The assumption is that these factors have no significant role in either the origins or the treatment of disease. That attitude is reinforced by narrowly conceived psychological research.
An article in the
British Medical Journal
reported on a five-year study of more than two hundred women with breast cancer that aimed to determine whether a recurrence of cancer can be triggered by severe life events, such as divorce or the death of someone close. The authors concluded that “women with breast cancer need not fear that stressful experiences will precipitate a return of their disease.” 1 Dr. Donna Stewart, a professor at the University of Toronto and chairwoman ofwomen’s issues for the University Health Network, commented that the study’s results “made sense.”
Dr. Stewart was the lead author of a study published in 2001 in the journal
Psycho-Oncology
. Nearly four hundred women with a history of breast cancer were asked what they thought had caused their malignancy. Forty-two per cent cited stress—much more than other factors such as diet, environment, genetics and lifestyle. 2 “I think it reflects what’s going on in society in general,” Dr. Stewart says. “People think stress causes everything. The evidence for stress is pretty low. And the evidence for hormones and genetics is pretty high.”
Yet Michelle and the many other women who suspect a strong relationship between stress and their breast cancer have science and clinical insight on their side. No other cancer has been as minutely studied for the potential biological connections between psychological influences and the onset of the disease. A rich body of evidence, drawn from animal studies and human experience, supports the impression of cancer patients that emotional stress is a major contributing cause of breast malignancy.
Contrary to the assertions of the Toronto researchers, the “evidence for genetics” is not high. Only a small minority of women are at high genetic risk for breast cancer and only a small minority of women with breast cancer—about 7 per cent—acquire the disease for genetic reasons. Even for those genetically predisposed, environmental factors must be involved, since far from everyone with one of the three genes known to be associated with breast cancer will actually develop a malignant tumour. In the vast majority of women or men diagnosed with breast cancer, heredity makes little or no contribution.
It is artificial to impose a separation between hormones and emotions. While it is perfectly true that hormones are active promoters or inhibitors of malignancy, it is not true that their actions have nothing to do with stress. In fact, one of the chief ways that emotions act biologically in cancer causation is through the effect of hormones. Some hormones—estrogen, for example—encourage tumour growth. Others enhance cancer development by reducing the immune system’s capacity to destroy malignant cells.
Hormone production is intimately affected by psychological stress. Women have always known that emotional stress affects their ovarianfunction and their menstrual cycles—excessive stress may even inhibit menstruation.
The
Breast cancer patients often report that their doctors do not express an active interest in them as individuals or in the social and emotional context in which they live. The assumption is that these factors have no significant role in either the origins or the treatment of disease. That attitude is reinforced by narrowly conceived psychological research.
An article in the
British Medical Journal
reported on a five-year study of more than two hundred women with breast cancer that aimed to determine whether a recurrence of cancer can be triggered by severe life events, such as divorce or the death of someone close. The authors concluded that “women with breast cancer need not fear that stressful experiences will precipitate a return of their disease.” 1 Dr. Donna Stewart, a professor at the University of Toronto and chairwoman ofwomen’s issues for the University Health Network, commented that the study’s results “made sense.”
Dr. Stewart was the lead author of a study published in 2001 in the journal
Psycho-Oncology
. Nearly four hundred women with a history of breast cancer were asked what they thought had caused their malignancy. Forty-two per cent cited stress—much more than other factors such as diet, environment, genetics and lifestyle. 2 “I think it reflects what’s going on in society in general,” Dr. Stewart says. “People think stress causes everything. The evidence for stress is pretty low. And the evidence for hormones and genetics is pretty high.”
Yet Michelle and the many other women who suspect a strong relationship between stress and their breast cancer have science and clinical insight on their side. No other cancer has been as minutely studied for the potential biological connections between psychological influences and the onset of the disease. A rich body of evidence, drawn from animal studies and human experience, supports the impression of cancer patients that emotional stress is a major contributing cause of breast malignancy.
Contrary to the assertions of the Toronto researchers, the “evidence for genetics” is not high. Only a small minority of women are at high genetic risk for breast cancer and only a small minority of women with breast cancer—about 7 per cent—acquire the disease for genetic reasons. Even for those genetically predisposed, environmental factors must be involved, since far from everyone with one of the three genes known to be associated with breast cancer will actually develop a malignant tumour. In the vast majority of women or men diagnosed with breast cancer, heredity makes little or no contribution.
It is artificial to impose a separation between hormones and emotions. While it is perfectly true that hormones are active promoters or inhibitors of malignancy, it is not true that their actions have nothing to do with stress. In fact, one of the chief ways that emotions act biologically in cancer causation is through the effect of hormones. Some hormones—estrogen, for example—encourage tumour growth. Others enhance cancer development by reducing the immune system’s capacity to destroy malignant cells.
Hormone production is intimately affected by psychological stress. Women have always known that emotional stress affects their ovarianfunction and their menstrual cycles—excessive stress may even inhibit menstruation.
The
Similar Books
