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more diseases caused by stress

1 Researchers from the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre have blamed stress for schizophrenia. According to them, a hormone called cortisole —released in response to stress — has the potential to damage the brain and thus cause schizophrenia. The researchers noted that in schizophrenics the level of cortisole is abnormally high. 2 Stress can lead to diabetes in children, claim Swedish researchers, who have studied 17,000 kids and their parents. Violence against the mother, difficulty in sleeping and the lack of satisfaction for the behaviour of the parents are some major causes that can lead to stress in children, the researchers noted. 3 Stress can cause heart diseases, including coronary artery problem, suggests a study in Circulation. Researcher Georg Noll from the University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, and colleagues have found that stress decreases the natural ability of blood vessels to expand and increase heart rate in people.

Regular consumption of soup ? particularly if it?s loaded with vegetable ingredients ? can help prevent stress and related disorders in individuals, says a new study in the Journal of Nutrition. US researcher Antonio Martin and colleagues at the human nutrition research centre on ageing at the Tufts University in Boston found that the anti-oxidant ingredients of vegetables work wonders in cutting down the stress level in people.

For a period of two weeks, the researchers regularly fed 12 healthy volunteers 500 ml of soup containing cucumbers, olive oil, tomatoes, onion, garlic, green peppers and so on. When they collected blood samples of the volunteers at the end of the second week they found that uric acid ? a potent molecule to indicate stress in the human body ? had got significantly reduced in both male and female volunteers.

Three other molecules ? F2-isoprostanes, prostaglandin E2 and monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (which indicate stress in humans) ? were also decreased with soup consumption.?Consumption of vegetable soup decreases oxidative stress and biomarkers of inflammation, which indicates that the protective effect of vegetables may extend beyond their antioxidant capacity,? wrote Martin in the journal.

Surprisingly, the researchers also noted that decrease of the level of stress-indicator molecules was also accompanied with a rise in the level of vitamin C in the blood, which fights reactive oxygen species produced in the body.