Health: The Ravages Of Stress

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Finally, the stressed women's cells had higher levels of free radicals, a type of highly reactive molecule that can damage DNA. One might argue that women whose children were born with those disorders already had something wrong with their DNA and that stress wasn't the cause. But that wouldn't explain another crucial fact: the degree of cellular damage was highest in women who had been caring for a disabled child the longest. "We tried our hardest to make the result go away," says Blackburn, "because we wanted to make sure we weren't fooling ourselves. But we couldn't."

The experiment will have to be replicated before it's fully accepted, and the prospect of some sort of antiaging medicine to protect cells is distant at best. Still, the study seems to tie together a lot of interesting threads. "What will really be interesting," says Sapolsky, "will be to trace the pathways--how you go from the level of people getting no sleep down to the cellular level. It will be amazing once we understand that."