Questioning the ExpertIt doesn’t take a scientist — rocket or
not — to predict that when you’re stressed, you’re probably
going to look and feel pretty haggard. But leave it to a female
scientist to wonder if those external signs of stress also
signaled some cellular changes. Last December, Elissa Epel, PhD,
a research psychologist at the University of California, San
Francisco, published the first study to document the link
between psychological stress and cell aging. Here, in this
Personal Consult, she talks about her groundbreaking findings —
and how they apply to us all. Q. So just how does stress cause
aging? A. "We’ve known for 50 years that stress contributes to
hypertension, cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, and
autoimmune disorders — diseases that can shorten our lifespan.
But we had no direct documentation of how stress impacts aging
at the cellular level. My team identified marked changes in the
DNA of the white-blood cells in stressed-out women. Under
prolonged emotional stress, the telo