Senior Moments: Statistics show stress level on caregivers can be incredibly high By Jackie Byrd
A column for seniors and those who love them ---
My eyes have seen much, but they are not weary. My ears have heard much, but they thirst for more. - Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet
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Think care-giving causes stress? Would you be surprised to hear that caregivers have a 63 percent higher death rate than a control group of noncaregivers? This is a fact for which elder law attorneys have reams of anecdotal evidence. We see it over and over again while working with our clients and their families.
Now the anecdotal stories are being backed up by statistical evidence. A study conducted by a research team at Ohio State University focused on the effect the stress of care-giving had on caregivers, and the findings are somewhat startling. Subjects for the six-year study were elderly people caring for spouses with Alzheimer's disease.
Longtime Senior Moments readers will not be surprised to hear that the study not only found a significant deterioration in the health of caregivers when compared to a similar group of noncaregivers but also found the caregivers had a significantly higher death rate than the control group of noncaregivers.
No matter how much love, compassion and selfless devotion the caregiver rains down on the ill loved one, the demands on that same caregiver add up to a great deal of stress. We already know that stress can induce illness and depression. The resulting poor health can further decrease the effectiveness of the caregiver and in some cases, as shown by the study already mentioned, stress can even cause premature death.
Stress can be defined as a physiological reaction to a threat. The greater the threat, the greater the level of stress. A threat is a real or perceived action against our person, according to longtermcarelink.net, the source of the above facts. Threats may include the anticipated possibility of death or injury but may also include challenges to our self-esteem, social standing or relationships to others, or a threat may simply be a potential or real disruption of our established routines.
What is stressful to one person may not be to another. For example, bumper-to-bumper Washington traffic might be stressful to the woman executive who is late for an important meeting, but to the delivery man who has no deadline and is being paid by the hour, it may be a welcome chance to relax and listen to the radio.
Stress produces real physical modifications, not just mental or emotional change. In some unknown way, the fears in our mind, both conscious and unconscious, cause the hypothalamus and pituitary glands, deep in our brains, to initiate a cascade of hormones and immune system proteins that temporarily alter our physical body. This is a normal human physiological response inherent in the human body when a threat is perceived, whether the threat is real or not.
The above response is often called "fight or flight" or the "stress response." The purpose is to give us clearer thought and increased strength as well as to activate the immune system to deal with potential injury and to repair potential wounds. When the perceived threat is removed, assuming no damage is done, the body's responses will return to normal.
The research at Ohio State identified a chemical marker in the blood that shows a significant increase under chronic stress and is linked to an impaired immune system response in aging adults. Even younger caregivers showed this marked increase in a specific immune system protein. As already noted, this study also found that the caregivers had a 63 percent higher death rate than the control group. About 70 percent of the caregivers died before the end of the six-year study and had to be replaced by new subjects. Another surprising result was that the high levels of the immune system protein continued even three years after the care-giving stopped. Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, leader of the team, suggested that prolonged stress may have triggered a permanent abnormality of the immune system.
This truncated quasi-medical explanation lacks a lot of detailed information, but the bottom line is that if the type of physical response just described is initiated over and over again, frequently, and over a long period of time, it can have a dangerous effect on the body. This constant initiation of the stress response is common among caregivers, especially those caring for loved ones with dementia. This type of stress is often unrelenting, occurring day after day and week after week. The long-term effects of this stress are more pronounced in middle-aged and older people - precisely the group most likely to be providing long-term care for others.
Prolonged high levels of the study protein have been linked to cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes, frequent viral infections, intestinal, stomach and colon disorders, various cancers and auto immune disorders such as lupus and multiple sclerosis. Additionally, wounds heal slower, vaccinations are less likely to take and recovery from infectious disease is impaired.
This information should give caregivers a compelling reason to pay more attention to their own health and well-being. Otherwise, there may be no one to provide care for your needy loved one.
Thanks for reading. Stay well. See you next week.
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The writer, a longtime resident of Bowie, is secretary of the Maryland/D.C. chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys and a member of the Elder Law Section of the Maryland State Bar Association. You can e-mail her at jbyrd@byrdandbyrd.com.
