Stress Can Hurt… Literally

A study in the journal Pain (Bortsov 2012) reports genetic variants increase the risk of developing chronic pain following a traumatic event. The study followed two groups that had undergone traumatic events, motor vehicle collisions and sexual assault. It looked at gene variations encoding FK506 binding protein 51 (FKBP5); a co-chaperone with heat-binding protein 90 (hps90),…

Seeing Stress Means Feeling Stress

Humans don’t have to directly experience trauma to be deeply affected; seeing someone else go through a distressing event can often be equally stressful. The vicarious experience is often sufficiently stressful to produce negative long-term effects resulting in PTSD, depression and other mood disorders.  For humans, seeing stress is often the same as feeling stress.…