Stress Makes You Old

While researchers have long been piecing together all the ways chronic stress undermines our health, a new study from the University of California at San Francisco confirmed what we suspected all along; stress really does age you.

What happens, researchers learned is that constant stress causes the telomeres - tiny caps on cells' chromosomes that govern cell regeneration - to get smaller. When a cell's telomeres get too short, the cell stops dividing and eventually dies.

Researchers discovered that the telomeres of women with chronically ill children were much shorter than those of women the same age who weren't caregivers. Moreover, the greater the women perceived their stress levels, the shorter their telomeres - and the "older" their cell. "These telomeres are one of the few biological markers of aging we have," says Judy Moskoitz, Ph.D., a psychologist at UCSF who worked on the research.

But wait, you're probably saying: what happened to the women who didn't perceive their lives as stressful? Stress didn't age them nearly as much. "For them, stress is like water off a duck's back," says Thomas Perls, M.D., an associate professor of medicine at Boston University and the director of the New England Centenarian Project, a nationwide study of 1500 people over the age of 100 and their children. "It isn't the amount if stress that matters but how you management."

In fact, number of centenarians Perls has studied have endured plenty of stress. After all, they lived through the Great depression and World Wars I and II, not to mention the usual array of divorces, deaths of loved ones, and even job losses. "Yet they don't seem to internalize it," Perls says.
They just let it go."

Dividing Up Home Drugery Chores

Dividing Up Home Drudgery
June 9, 2005;WSJ
Summary,article by Sue Shellenberger

Women's expanding role as breadwinners is altering old ways of splitting up household chores. Now that home-and-hearth are no longer automatically women's lot, how should couples divide duties?

Some couples are breaking new ground, based on email in response to my recent column on men stepping up their efforts around the house (and women not giving them credit): A sampling:

Pay-to-Play: This rule holds that whoever makes more money gets more time off at home to relax. Research shows the larger a wife's contribution to household income, the more help she gets from her husband.

The Seven-Day Switchoff: Make two lists of jobs, then alternate duties every week. One list includes drudgework "everybody despises," -- washing dishes, cleaning the counter and scrubbing the stove.
The other list can be tackled every few days, mopping, sweeping or vacuuming.

The Time-Clock Technique: Whoever spends more time at home does more chores. One risk: Husbands sometimes use this rationale to justify their wives' cutting back on hard-earned careers. Also, a time-clock mentality risks transforming spouses into stopwatch-toting efficiency critics.

Specialization of Labor: This capitalist approach splits tasks based on skill. One pitfall is that many householders now hire gardeners and contractors to do traditional male tasks. Thus men "don't uphold their end of the bargain. Another risk: This strategy can perpetuate inequities, sticking women with drudgery like dishes and laundry.

The Feudal Approach: A more egalitarian strategy is to give each partner hegemony in separate fiefdoms, A man might control the laundry, for example, while the woman rules the kitchen. Partners have not only authority over how chores in their separate realms are handled, but the clout to pressure a spouse for help.
This neutralizes a traditional female weapon in the chore wars -- control over how and when work is done. It affords men more satisfaction because they can steer at least a few outcomes. Also, men have to step up and bear consequences for slacking off -- such as kids hollering over a lack of clean clothes.

Enlist the Kids: This oft-neglected strategy is spreads the work to all who benefit by it.

SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
Any strategy for divvying up household chores can work if it:

Is explicit, rather than based on assumptions

Springs from negotiation, rather than decree

Is flexible enough for changing circumstances

Assigns value to each partner's work, paid or unpaid

Is fair over the long term

Working Moms "blackout"

Many working moms each midlife exhausted.
Time fo themselves is down to 54 minutes a day, down from 1.6 hours in 1977 - abd 30 minutes less than the 1.3 hours of free time working dads have. Moms' multiple roles can be so draining that many don't remember their 20s and 30s because they were so overwhelmed, lost focus and zoned out.
(Families and Work Institute)

Importance of flex schedules

Flexible work schedules help with employee retention and productivity.
Employees also say they can get more work done when they work during the hours they are most alert. Employees work harder for companies and bosses that give them more family time.
(Carnegie Mellon U. School of Business)

Job pressure = heart risks

Studies in Europe, Japan and the US have linked increases in cardiovascular risks and disease to a push for greater productivity.