14 DAY TRIAL // The stress a typical married couple feels during an ordinary half-hour argument is enough to slow their bodies' ability to heal from wounds by at least one day, a new study carried out by Ohio State University researchers has shown.
According to the study led by Janice K. Kiecolt-Glaser, this is due to the change in the levels of proinflammatory proteins in blood.
The researchers focused on a group of 42 married couples who had been together an average of at least 12 years. Each couple was admitted into the university's General Clinical Research Center for two, 24-hour-long visits. The visits were separated by a two-month interval.
During each visit, both the husband and wife were fitted with a small suction device which created eight tiny uniform blisters on their arms. The skin was removed from each blister and another device placed directly over each small wound, forming a protective bubble, from which researchers could extract fluids that normally fill such blisters.
The husbands and wives also completed questionnaires intended to gauge their level of stress at the beginning of the experiment. Lastly, each person was fitted with a catheter through which blood could be drawn for later analysis.
During the first visit, Kiecolt-Glaser said, each spouse was asked to talk for several minutes about some characteristic or behavior which he or she would like to change. This was a supportive, positive discussion.
"But during the second visit, we asked them to talk about an area of disagreement," she said, "something that inherently had an emotional element."
Researchers analyzed the data and reached the following conclusions: wounds took a day longer to heal after the arguments than they did after the initial supportive discussion and couples who showed high levels of hostility needed two days longer for wound-healing, compared to couples whose hostility appeared low.
Cytokines are key elements in the human immune system. They hold a delicate balance in maintaining the right immune response. Increased levels of IL-6 at the site of a wound stimulate the healing process but those same levels circulating throughout the bloodstream determine a problem.