They reduce the emission of stress proteins

Nov 14, 2009 09:35 GMT  ·  By
Thoughtful words may ease the impact of an argument on the health of couples and spouses
   Thoughtful words may ease the impact of an argument on the health of couples and spouses

Arguably the biggest challenge in the life of a couple is fight. As spirits heat, one or the other may drop some words that he or she does not necessarily mean, but that are uttered precisely because the other will undoubtedly be hurt. Many otherwise happy couples split and marriages ended following such arguments, even if this was not necessarily the wish of either one of the people in the relationship. Studies have already demonstrated that a stressful couple life can have adverse effects on the immune system. A new research also shows that people can easily avoid that and still remain together.

Scientists at the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) say that, during arguments, large amounts of various stress proteins are released when harmful words start flying. These proteins are the main agents that affect the immune system, and they can weaken it just enough so as to allow the onset and development of a number of serious medical conditions. “Previous research has shown that couples who are hostile to each other show health impairments and are at greater risk of disease,” Penn State Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health Jennifer Graham explains, quoted by PhysOrg.

“We wanted to know if couples who use thoughtfulness and reasoning in the midst of a fight incur potential health benefits. Typically, if you bring people to a lab and put them under stress, either by engaging them in a conflict or giving them a public speaking task, you can see an increase in proinflammatory cytokines such as Interleukin-6 (Il-6) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha),” the expert adds. Generally speaking, people in stressful relationships have elevated levels of chemicals known as cytokines, which have adverse effects on the body. Some 42 couples were analyzed for the new experiments, just before and shortly after they were appointed marital-talk tasks.

“We specifically looked at words that are linked with cognitive processing in other research and which have been predictive of health in studies where people express emotion about stressful events. These are words like – think, because, reason, why – that suggest people are either making sense of the conflict or at least thinking about it in a deep way,” Graham further explains. “We found that, controlling for depressed mood, individuals who showed more evidence of cognitive discussion during their fights showed smaller increases in both Il-6 and TNF-alpha cytokines over a 24-hour period,” she adds. Details of the study appear in the latest issue of the scientific hournal Health Psychology.