Teenage Stress Lasts into Adulthood

According to new scientific data, the stress of being a teenager, when fights with parents happen almost each day, can stretch far into adulthood, causing health problems later on in life. This effect is somewhat “silenced” by the fond memories of the time, and, of course, some have less arguments with their parents than others. Of the latter category, health issues are a real possibility when they reach maturity, researchers say. The thing is that no one has any way of knowing exactly how much fights would influence the health of teens in the future.

CRP, or C-reactive protein, is one of the bodily markers that let physicians know that a patient is under an increased risk of developing cardiovascular diseases (CVD) sometime during their lives. This inflammatory marker is best kept in low concentrations, and any increases can usually be associated with a traumatic event or with conditions such as depression and being pessimistic all the time.

In normal and healthy young adults, but who, as teens, had lots of fights with their parents, the CRP levels were far higher than in their also-healthy peers who reported less fights with them and their family.

“Although most research on stress and inflammation has focused upon adulthood, these results show that such links can occur as early as the teenage years, even among a healthy sample of young men and women. That suggests that alterations in the biological substrates that initiate CVD begin before adulthood,” UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior professor of psychiatry Andrew J. Fuligni, who has led the team behind the new discovery, explains. The details are published ahead of print in the online edition of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

“Our findings are consistent with the emerging body of evidence that points to the link between stress and increased inflammation, which places individuals at risk for the later development of cardiovascular disease,” the scientist adds. “Although the frequency of some of these experiences may be low, they could have a significant impact upon long-term physical health during adulthood,” he continues.

The expert holds that daily stress levels should also be accounted for when doctors perform their routine examinations on patients, attempting to assess their risk of developing cardiovascular diseases in the future. Stress can be cataloged as both a social and a psychological factor, and is considered to be an outside influence. The find also has other implications, because now no one can say for sure who got CVD because their body was predisposed to it, and who was stressed into it.