Stress was designed to get us the hell out of trouble back in the days when danger came with fangs and claws.
The white blood count increases (all the better to ward off infection), the pulse quickens (so we can run faster), and coagulation increases to prevent us bleeding to death if cut.
What was a great strategy for escaping a sabre tooth tiger is a particularly poor one when the risks we face are financial or social. There is a huge body of evidence that chronic stress is rough on our bodies and our mental health – and New Zealand’s rates of depression and suicide are symptomatic of how poorly we are handling those stressors.
Roughly a third of sufferers can be successfully treated by drug therapy, another third respond to counselling (or a combination of those two) while the final third are all out of luck. Or, are they?
In Just Cause and Effect: selenium deficiency in New Zealand we look at the links between selenium and serotonin – the happiness hormone.
