|
||||||||||
|
Relationships, Biology & Health |
||||||||||
 |
Our lab investigates how marital relationships and parent-child relationships influence stress biology and health. Our research examines two main biological processes: regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis -- which produces the stress hormone cortisol -- and immune responses to psychological stress. Several lines of research have shown that stressful social relationships are bad for your health. However, very little is known about the psychological and physiological processes that explain relationship-health links. |  |
||||||||
|
|
Our work in this area primarily focuses on the health consequences of family relationships. Family stressors include marital conflict, work stress that people carry home with them from the office, parent-child conflict, and so on. We recently completed a year-long EAR study of 44 families in which we assessed diurnal cortisol and collected diary and EAR data (Slatcher, Robles, Repetti, & Fellows, 2010). We are finding, for example, that work stress affects not only people's own cortisol but also affects spouses' cortisol. For wives, it's not all bad news: work stress only appears to affect women who are either unhappy in their marriage or don't open up about their thoughts and feelings to their spouses. This study is the first to our knowledge to show that momentary feelings of stress affect close others’ cortisol levels. We also have shown that conflict at home measured by the EAR recording devices (which allows us to actually hear what goes on when people are at home together) is linked to less "healthy" stress hormone production in young children (see Slatcher & Robles, in press)
|
|
||||||||
|
Building on this work, we are currently investigating the links between parent-child relationships and physical health in late childhood and early adolescence. In collaboration with Ted Robles at UCLA, our lab is conducting an 8-week daily diary study of the biological mechanisms underlying how family environments influence susceptibility to upper respiratory-tract infections (URIs). We are also beginning data collection for an exciting new study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NHLBI R01HL114097) investigating the effects of family environments on one of the most stubborn health problems in the U.S.: childhood asthma. We are recruiting 10-15 year-olds with asthma from metropolitan Detroit, who wear the EAR, complete daily diary measures, laboratory assessments of family functioning, immunological and epigenetic measures, and clinical asthma evaluations. We'll follow participants for three waves of data collection over two years, which will allow us to examine how changes in family behaviors over time are linked to changes in asthma symptom severity and pulmonary functioning and identify key biological and psychological pathways that may help explain the links between family relationships and asthma. |
|
||||||||
|
||||||||||
