Coping With Stress Helps Cholesterol
Good Coping Skills May Raise ‘Good’ Cholesterol Levels
By Kathleen Doheny
WebMD Medical NewsReviewed by Louise Chang, MDAug. 20, 2007 — The better you cope with stress, the better your “good” cholesterol level is likely to be, according to a new study.
“We know that stress and hostility affect cholesterol,” says researcher Carolyn M. Aldwin, PhD, professor and chairwoman of the department of human development and family sciences at Oregon State University in Corvallis. There has been less research, however, on how coping skills can counteract the effects of stress, she says.
Good coping skills were associated with better levels of the so-called “good” cholesterol or high-density lipoprotein (HDL) in her study.
The study was released at the 115th annual convention of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco.
Stress and Cholesterol
Aldwin and her colleagues evaluated data from 716 men who participated in the Normative Aging Study. The researchers looked at the interplay of hostility, stress, coping, and the participants’ cholesterol levels.
The average age of the participants was 65; most were white. They were evenly split between white-collar and blue-collar occupations.
The researchers assessed the men’s hostility and asked them to describe their most stressful problem in the past week.
The men also completed a questionnaire that asked them to rate how often they used 26 different coping strategies when dealing with a stressful problem in the past month. Some were unhealthy strategies, such as socially isolating themselves when under stress or blaming themselves for the stress. Other strategies were healthy, such as making a plan of action to deal with the problem causing the stress.
The more hostile the men were, the more likely they were to look at problems as stressful. They were also more apt to use unhealthy coping skills to deal with that stress.
After fasting overnight, the men’s blood was tested for HDL cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol, and triglycerides.
Read more of this study by clicking above.
stress, cholesterol
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