Social stress can change our gene expression

Not all stressors have the same impact on health. Stress arising from threats to social safety It is very likely that this will influence psychological, biological and clinical outcomes.

This is the conclusion that clinical psychologist George Slavich of UCLA came to after decades of research into the biology of stress. By measuring blood and saliva samples from participants before and after they perform socially stressful tasks such as public speaking, Slavich investigates how stress activates the immune system, transforming the body from a relatively calm state to a state of alertness to threats. These changes occur quickly and are significant in magnitude: several hundred genes can change within 10 to 15 minutes. Furthermore, these changes appear to persist for at least an hour after the stressor.

“The biggest ahaFor me, there has been a moment where even just five to ten minutes of stress can reshape my biology at the gene expression level,” says Slavich.

Social security theory

Based on these insights, Slavich developed the Social Safety Theory – an evolutionarily based framework for understanding the biology of stress and its interaction with the brain and immune system. The theory proposes three key ways in which our social experiences promote or worsen health:

1. Social safe situations (environments characterized by acceptance, inclusion, connection, belonging, harmony and support) and social threatening situations (circumstances characterized by conflict, aggression, criticism, disapproval, discrimination, isolation and rejection)
2. Watched social safety and social threat (how the individual appraises a specific social situation or interaction)
3. Social safety schemas (mental representations of the social self, the world and the future, which include aspects of social safety and social threat)

A responsibility and an opportunity

The sensitivity of our biology to the waves of our social environment can be daunting, partly because it is not always possible to surround ourselves with warm relationships and avoid social conflict. However, Slavich sees this as an opportunity to reshape our health by focusing on how we live think about our surrounding social world.

“While we don’t always have control over our circumstances, including what others say or do, we do can control our thoughts about these situations,” says Slavich. “If I view a social situation as conflict or evaluation, this will lead to changes in my peripheral biology that can have detrimental health consequences. The advantage is that we have the power to reshape social interactions. By changing how we watch social situations, we can reshape our biology and potentially reshape our health.”

Here are three questions about stress in Slavich.

What have you learned from examining stress from a psycho-neuroimmunological lens?

GS: The brain, the immune system and our psychology are closely linked. When we experience a stressful event, the brain produces thoughts and emotions in response. Our psychology will determine whether that threat perception persists, and how we intervene to downregulate it. The purpose of the immune system is to keep us biologically safe. When the brain senses that the body is in a socially threatening circumstance, it is as if the brain picks up its red phone and calls on the immune system to mobilize itself by releasing immune cells throughout the body. Those immune cells then release small proteins called cytokines, which are the key players of the immune system. Cytokines, among other things, increase inflammation throughout the body, which in turn speeds wound healing and recovery in the short term, but can negatively impact health in the long term.

Ultimately, those of our ancestors who monitored the social environment for signals of social conflict, isolation, or rejection would have an immune system response that led to more effective wound healing and bacterial containment. In fact, people whose brains and immune systems were one overreaction Theoretically, a threat could have passed on their genes more efficiently than the brain waiting until the body was actually physically injured before mounting a healing response.

The brain’s ability to communicate effectively with the immune system would therefore have been highly conserved over evolution. The connection between our psychology, the brain and the immune system has enormous biological benefits and has, in part, allowed us to pass on our genes effectively.

Why are our social connections such important sources of stress and well-being at the same time?

GS: There are many benefits to friendly, warm, trusting social ties. These connections increase our chances of physical care and protection, food sources and finding a mate. If you are socially isolated or in a conflict-filled relationship, your risk of physical danger and injury increases, and your chances of accessing needed resources decreases. Because close social ties provide many benefits, our brains are tuned to pay special attention to them in the environment. Even the stress we experience from other sources is often exacerbated by the social element. For example, what makes failure at work even more stressful is the thought that you have let other people down or that your coworkers will think negatively of you.

But our ability to engage with theory of mind, to work together and to trust each other, is a double-edged sword. The downside of this incredible ability is that it allows us to live in a symbolic universe. More specifically, our interactions can be recreated in our minds and live on long after the actual interaction has ended. That’s why the brain is such a crucial part of the immune system: it can keep the immune system’s response activated long after a threat has passed.

What are some interventions for a more resilient stress response?

GS: I like a two-pronged approach. One of these is the application of a technique called cognitive behavioral therapy cognitive restructuring. The idea behind cognitive restructuring is that you are not your thoughts. Rather, your thoughts are just hypotheses about the social environment – ​​fleeting impressions about things you observe. The cognitive restructuring process involves creating some space between us and our thoughts and emotions. To achieve this, you can write down a particularly stressful thought on paper and then look for evidence that does and does not support the thought. You then revise the original thought in light of the evidence, which often leads to you looking at the world in a more honest and balanced way, dampening the emotional heat.

The second approach is to address mind wandering using mindfulness techniques. Every time we symbolically represent a social interaction in our minds, we have the potential to strongly influence our biology. When our thoughts wander to the past and future during the day about things that have already happened or that could happen, this can in turn affect our health. That is not so problematic if we have positive thoughts about the past or the future. However, when these thoughts are negative, we are actually triggering an inflammatory response that has no functional purpose at the moment. Practicing mindfulness (for example, through mindful breathing) can be helpful in this context, as we bring our focus back to the present, where things are (usually) going well.

Many thanks to George Slavich for his time and insights. Professor Slavich is a renowned stress researcher and director of the Stress assessment and research laboratory at UCLA.