Parental Stress Raises Kids' Risk of Asthma

By Rachel Stockton (rachels@foodconsumer.org)

For the last several years, the American public has become well acquainted with this reality: stress kills. Not only does stress kill, it can cause fates worse than death, such as depression, chronic illness and a plethora of various mental, emotional and physical abnormalities if not dealt with in a healthy (whatever that means) way.

Now, we are coming to realize that we are not islands that do not affect those around us, especially if we are parents. A new study shows that a parent's stress level can affect whether or not their young children develop asthma, a disease that has skyrocketed 160% since 1980.

Asthma is the result of inflammation of the airways triggered by environmental factors. Stress causes the body to be on heightened alert by engaging the body's inflammatory response mechanism. So, if a child senses the stress of the parent, their little bodies provide the perfect breeding ground for an asthma attack. Stress serves as the catalyst, in these instances, of serious airway constriction.

Asthma is added to an already long list of illnesses that parents can vicariously pass to their children. In 2008, an article in the Archives of General Psychiatry revealed that a mother's stress level can affect whether or not a child becomes schizophrenic later in life. It is thought that the increased hormone cortisol disrupts congenital brain formation. And mothers, especially stressed out ones, send signals to their unborn children about the environment they are about to be born into.

Whether or not a child suffers from obesity can also be affected by one or both parents. If a mother has untreated gestational diabetes, the child is more likely to suffer weight problems during childhood. And, of course, we've all heard the statistics that tell us that if one parent is obese the child is 40% more likely to have weight problems. If both parents are obese, that percentage doubles to 80%.

Stress is neither good nor bad, it simply is. However, there are a number of techniques we can learn in order to deal with both every day stressors and even some of the more devastating crises, such as the death or illness of an immediate family member. Even if we don't wish to take the time to learn them for our own benefit, maybe we can be motivated to garner an understanding of better coping mechanisms for the sake of our children's health.