Business Insight presented by Arlington Dermatology Stress and Skin; Stress and Health I am not sure if I can add to hundreds of books and articles about stress. We all know it is bad for us. We all know we should avoid it or at least control it. But let's look at stress in a little different way. Let's get to the bottom of what it is and what it can do. Stress can be chronic or acute. Acute, sudden stress is usually situational and it involves our reaction to a sudden and unexpected event. Chronic stress is long-term, repetitive situations, day-to-day, week-to week, and longer. It is usually associated with our'state of mind. Stress can be psychological or physical. Psychological stress involves our mind, thoughts, and mental status. Physical stress can be associated with trauma, infection, or a long-term illness. All the above are covered under one term of stress. All the above are controlled by the functions of our brain and responses of our immune system. When you hear that someone had a heart attack and it was stress that killed him, it is actually, not so simple. I hear sometimes that eating pizza causes flares of psoriasis. It is not so simple either. If either of the cases would be simple, well, we would recommend not eating pizza at all and psoriasis would not flare, right? Wrong. Each of us is a book. It has many words and many pages. Each book is different. It has a different number of pages and words that are not in the same order. This book is our genetic code. The order is the sequence of proteins and immune system cells. And each sequence and its organization is different from each other. There are plenty of similarities, especially in a family chain of individuals but truly, each order is different. Some of the chains and their deviations we discovered to be associated with some diseases. Many of them, we still do not understand. What we do know is that any stress, physical or psychological, is affecting our immune system and its responsiveness in various ways. Whatever our predispositions are, and these are our own sequences and orders, they get exposed and compromised. And this is how we get sick. Let me give you a couple of examples, better understood or not understood at all. For years now, we can order blood tests for women whose mothers were diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer. BRCA testing is an excellent tool to predict, based on results, what the risk of developing that cancer would be. Remember Angelina Jolie? She decided to undergo an elective double mastectomy, removal of both of her breasts, because the test results showed a very high risk of her developing breast cancer. used to work with a female physician who decided to have a mastectomy and total hysterectomy (removal of your stress. The less of it, the better. Learn how to ovaries and uterus) to avoid that risk. While these decisions are very difficult, they do save lives and we are lucky to have the tools to prevent ilness. Another and totally different story is developing in front of our eyes for the last 12 months. COVID-19 came out of the blue, spread like there is no tomorrow, and killed millions. Yes, it definitely targeted a lot of people with a compromised immune system but it also took young and healthy. Why? What was different about them? We do not know. Hopefully, we will get to these answers but it may take us a while. There are many other diseases for which we do not really know answers. We realize that there are 'stressors'and there are'reactions'to those stressors. So, if your genetic book has a page withalink to a skin inflammation, and you are under a lot of stress, you will develop some inflammatory skin condition. However, if your book has several pages with heart muscles weakness, and you experience stress, yes, you may end up with a heart attack. So, can we prevent our health deterioration? To some extent, yes. Knowing that any stress can potentially put us at some risk, we should avoid and prevent any possible stress, which is of course impossible. Minimizing it and learning how to deal with it and avoiding 'stressors' is a way to live. As we do not quite know or understand our genetic predispositions in most cases, the less stress we expose ourselves to, the better. Will we know how to prevent all the diseases one day? Will we understand each person's genetic code to do that? I do not think that it will happen any time soon. lam also not sure that ethically we would want to know everything about our dispositions and the future. We will discuss the ethical side of genetics in some future articles. For now, control deal with it. Learn how to use it in a positive way. And stay safe. Michael Bukhalo, MD Arlington Dermatology 5301 Keystone Court Rolling Meadows, IL 60008 Tel. 847 392 5440 | www.arlingtondermatology.net Business Insight presented by Arlington Dermatology Stress and Skin; Stress and Health I am not sure if I can add to hundreds of books and articles about stress. We all know it is bad for us. We all know we should avoid it or at least control it. But let's look at stress in a little different way. Let's get to the bottom of what it is and what it can do. Stress can be chronic or acute. Acute, sudden stress is usually situational and it involves our reaction to a sudden and unexpected event. Chronic stress is long-term, repetitive situations, day-to-day, week-to week, and longer. It is usually associated with our'state of mind. Stress can be psychological or physical. Psychological stress involves our mind, thoughts, and mental status. Physical stress can be associated with trauma, infection, or a long-term illness. All the above are covered under one term of stress. All the above are controlled by the functions of our brain and responses of our immune system. When you hear that someone had a heart attack and it was stress that killed him, it is actually, not so simple. I hear sometimes that eating pizza causes flares of psoriasis. It is not so simple either. If either of the cases would be simple, well, we would recommend not eating pizza at all and psoriasis would not flare, right? Wrong. Each of us is a book. It has many words and many pages. Each book is different. It has a different number of pages and words that are not in the same order. This book is our genetic code. The order is the sequence of proteins and immune system cells. And each sequence and its organization is different from each other. There are plenty of similarities, especially in a family chain of individuals but truly, each order is different. Some of the chains and their deviations we discovered to be associated with some diseases. Many of them, we still do not understand. What we do know is that any stress, physical or psychological, is affecting our immune system and its responsiveness in various ways. Whatever our predispositions are, and these are our own sequences and orders, they get exposed and compromised. And this is how we get sick. Let me give you a couple of examples, better understood or not understood at all. For years now, we can order blood tests for women whose mothers were diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer. BRCA testing is an excellent tool to predict, based on results, what the risk of developing that cancer would be. Remember Angelina Jolie? She decided to undergo an elective double mastectomy, removal of both of her breasts, because the test results showed a very high risk of her developing breast cancer. used to work with a female physician who decided to have a mastectomy and total hysterectomy (removal of your stress. The less of it, the better. Learn how to ovaries and uterus) to avoid that risk. While these decisions are very difficult, they do save lives and we are lucky to have the tools to prevent ilness. Another and totally different story is developing in front of our eyes for the last 12 months. COVID-19 came out of the blue, spread like there is no tomorrow, and killed millions. Yes, it definitely targeted a lot of people with a compromised immune system but it also took young and healthy. Why? What was different about them? We do not know. Hopefully, we will get to these answers but it may take us a while. There are many other diseases for which we do not really know answers. We realize that there are 'stressors'and there are'reactions'to those stressors. So, if your genetic book has a page withalink to a skin inflammation, and you are under a lot of stress, you will develop some inflammatory skin condition. However, if your book has several pages with heart muscles weakness, and you experience stress, yes, you may end up with a heart attack. So, can we prevent our health deterioration? To some extent, yes. Knowing that any stress can potentially put us at some risk, we should avoid and prevent any possible stress, which is of course impossible. Minimizing it and learning how to deal with it and avoiding 'stressors' is a way to live. As we do not quite know or understand our genetic predispositions in most cases, the less stress we expose ourselves to, the better. Will we know how to prevent all the diseases one day? Will we understand each person's genetic code to do that? I do not think that it will happen any time soon. lam also not sure that ethically we would want to know everything about our dispositions and the future. We will discuss the ethical side of genetics in some future articles. For now, control deal with it. Learn how to use it in a positive way. And stay safe. Michael Bukhalo, MD Arlington Dermatology 5301 Keystone Court Rolling Meadows, IL 60008 Tel. 847 392 5440 | www.arlingtondermatology.net