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A team of American scientists are close to developing a vaccine that can cure stress to prevent it from causing illnesses such as diabetes and heart attack.
Robert Sapolsky, professor of neuroscience at Stanford University and leader of the research team, alled the potential vaccine Sapolsky Shot which he said can alter brain chemistry to create "focused calm."
In his research on the damage caused by stress to animals in Kenya, Sapolsky learned that hormones called glucocorticoids, which are part of the body's immune system and help fight cancer and inflammation, are turned off in animals after a stressful situation like escaping from a lion but remains active in humans even when a threat subsides.
The glucocorticoids produced by the human body in response to everyday alarms then becomes toxic biologically destroying brain cells and weakening the immune system, according to Sapolsky. To neutralise the hormones, the research team tampered with a herpes virus to make it carry engineered "neiroprotective" genes to the brain.
In laboratory experiments, the virus worked on rats proving his own theory that it is possible to reduce the neural damage caused by stress.
"In humans, this engineered virus would short-circuit the neural feedback caused by stress, that lingering feeling of tension after a crisis has passed," according to the team's study published in October by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. "It would leave you fresher and ready to deal with another threat; so you can maintain your drive, but with more focused calm rather than bad temper and indigestion."
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