More and more is coming to light about the major impact that stress has on our health.

In fact continued stress is now considered a serious disease state by many health professionals. Stress has many form, from the common notion of emotional stress, to various kinds of physical stress on the body. Importantly, stress can happen on the cellular level from exposure to the toxins from chemicals found all around us, pesticides in our food, air pollution, and bacterial toxins. Such cellular stress can lead to development of disease.

Now researchers from the University of Copenhagen have found that external factors can stress our cells through the control of our genes:

We found that stress-activating factors can control our genes by turning on certain genes that were supposed to be silenced. It is very important that some genes are on and others are off in order to ensure normal fetal development and correct function of our cells later in life, says Dr. Klaus Hansen.

The impact on our genes of stress can effect our health in numerous ways, say researchers. The is especially true early in life, as even brief changes in gene activation can be disastrous during fetal development as establishment of correct cellular identity can be disturbed in our cells.

When it comes to our long-term health, the research is more evidence of the important of stress of all kinds.

Source
University of Copenhagen