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PEOPLES DAILY, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2013
How a bad relationship can make you ill By Anna Hodgekiss
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eeling anxious about close relationships could make you fall ill - by damaging your immune system. Not only does anxiety appear to raise levels of stress hormones in the body, it also makes it less effective at fighting off illness. Researchers at Ohio Sate University tested the health effects of 'attachment anxiety' on 85 couples who had been married for an average of more
than 12 years. People with attachment anxiety are defined as being excessively concerned about rejection. They also have a tendency to constantly seek reassurance that they are loved, and are more likely to interpret ambiguous events in a relationship as negative, the researchers said. Couples completes questionnaires about their relationships and had samples of blood and saliva taken.
People with relationship woes had higher levels of cortisol - a hormone associated with stress and increased risk of disease.
They also had fewer T-cells, important components of the immune system's defence against infection.
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nurse is researching whether an old family remedy using sugar to heal wounds does actually work. Moses Murandu, from Zimbabwe, grew up watching his father use granulated sugar to treat wounds. Sugar is thought to draw water away from wounds and prevent bacteria from multiplying. Early results from a trial on 35 hospital patients in Birmingham are encouraging, but more research is needed. One of the patients who received sugar treatment on a wound was 62-year-old Alan Bayliss from Birmingham. He had undergone an abovethe knee amputation on his right leg at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and, as part of the surgery, a vein was removed from his left leg leaving a wound which would not heal properly. Murandu, who is studying for a doctorate at Birmingham University, was contacted and asked to treat the wound with sugar. Fast recovery Mr Bayliss said: "It has been revolutionary. The actual wound was very deep - it was almost as
This was so levels of a key stress-related hormone and numbers of certain immune cells could be tested. The participants also reported general anxiety symptoms and their sleep quality. Of particular interest were people considered to be at the high end of the attachment anxiety spectrum. The researchers found that people with high attachment anxiety produced, on average, 11 per cent more cortisol - a hormone associated with stress - than those who weren't so anxious. They also found that the more anxious people were also
less able to fight off infection, as they had up to 22 per cent Tcells than less anxiously attached partners. Incidentally, while more women in the study suffered from higher levels of attachment anxiety, the researchers saw the same elevated levels of cortisol and lower T-cells in the men who were anxious. Stress is already known to negatively affect health, but this study aimed to look specifically at relationship anxiety. And while more women in the study suffered from higher levels of attachment anxiety, the researchers saw the same elevated levels of cortisol and lower T-cells in the men who
were anxious. Lead study author Lisa Jaremka said: 'Everyone has these types of concerns now and again in their relationships, but a high level of attachment anxiety refers to people who have these worries fairly constantly in most of their relationships.' Though some scientists believe that attachment anxiety can be traced back to childhood, Dr Jaremka noted that people who feel anxious can change, over time. 'It's not necessarily a permanent state of existence,' she said in the study published in the journal Psychological Science Source: Dailymail.co.uk
Family sugar remedy tested for healing people's wounds big as my finger. "When Moses first did the dressing he almost used the whole pot of sugar, but two weeks later he only needed to use four or five teaspoons.
"I am very pleased indeed. I feel that it has speeded up my recovery a lot, and it has been a positive step forward. I was a little sceptical at first but once I saw the sugar in operation and how much
it was drawing the wound out, I was impressed." The randomised control trial at three West Midlands hospitals is only half way through. So far 35 patients have been treated
Moses Murandu saw sugar treatment being used often as a child in Zimbabwe
with sugar treatment. Murandu, a senior lecturer in adult nursing at the University of Wolverhampton, said he was very pleased by the results. "I believe in the sugar and the nurses and doctors who see the effects are beginning to believe in it too." The treatment is thought to work because applying sugar to a wound draws the water away, thereby starving the bacteria of what it needs to grow. This prevents the bacteria from multiplying and they die. Staff nurse Jonathan Janneman said the treatment had boosted the patient's morale too. "He could see the cavity in his leg as well as having been unwell and through operations. But the sugar has given him something to hold on to. "It is amazing that something as simple as sugar has given him a morale boost." Source: BBCNews.com