How Does Stress Promote Cancer? and How to Stress Less

How Does Stress Promote Cancer?

Chronic stress activates the neuroendocrine system and the sympathetic nervous system and leads to a decline and dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus under stress.

This classic neuroendocrine system is known as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. It is the first system found to be linked to the stress response.

Chronic stress can also cause corresponding changes in the body’s immune function and inflammatory response, which is significant because a long-term inflammatory response and the decline of the body’s immune surveillance capabilities are implicated in tumorigenesis.

Stress management is therefore essential for both healthy people, those with a high probability of developing cancer and cancer patients.

Stress hormones promote the occurrence and development of cancers by:

• inducing DNA damage
• increasing p53 degradation
• regulating the tumor microenvironment

In a bit more detail….

Chronic stress can activate the inflammatory response and the interaction between inflammatory cells and cancer cells to form the inflammatory tumor microenvironment. This then promotes all stages of tumorigenesis¹.

It can also enhance neuroinflammation, which further impairs the brain’s cognitive processing of stress.

Chronic stress can wreck the immune system by causing the suppression of T cells that suppress the cytotoxic T cells mediated cellular immunity and interferon (protein released by animal cells) production thus weakening immune surveillance.

The detrimental outcome of all of these mechanisms is that cancer invasion risk is elevated as is the risk of metastasis and the effectiveness anti-tumor therapy is reduced^2,3.

In other words your chemotherapy, immunotherapy or radiotherapy may be less effective for those who do not manage their stress levels.

(This information is sourced from a Review Article entitled Chronic Stress Promotes Cancer Development by Dai et al 2020 ⁴).

Some ways to stress less

The good news is that people can counter these detrimental processes by becoming proactive in their response to everyday and chronic stressors.

Ways to lower stress are:

• Take steps to gain quality sleep
• Spend time with people who make you feel good & avoid people who are detrimental to your wellbeing
• Do fun things
• Change from a bad employment environment to a good one
• Exercise regularly (to find your optimum workout click here)
• Find a therapist to source anti-stress tools with for example, cognitive behavioural therapy or psychotherapy
• Journal your thoughts (for info on brain dump writing click here)
• Take steps to cut alcohol/drugs intake to regain homeostasis of mind and body
• Eat well
• Allocate a set time of the day to think about stressful things to free up your mind for the remainder of the day

Supporting Studies

1.            Greten FR, Grivennikov SI. Inflammation and Cancer: Triggers, Mechanisms, and Consequences. Immunity. 2019;51(1):27-41.
2.           Yang H, Xia L, Chen J, et al. Stress-glucocorticoid-TSC22D3 axis compromises therapy-induced antitumor immunity. Nat Med. 2019;25(9):1428-1441.
3.            Curtin NM, Boyle NT, Mills KH, Connor TJ. Psychological stress suppresses innate IFN-gamma production via glucocorticoid receptor activation: reversal by the anxiolytic chlordiazepoxide. Brain Behav Immun. 2009;23(4):535-547.
4.           Dai S, Mo Y, Wang Y, et al. Chronic Stress Promotes Cancer Development. Front Oncol. 2020;10:1492-1492.