Returning to the Psychosomatic Medicine journal article, it states…

In general, the study found, women with greater attachment insecurity had lower activity in their natural killer cells, key defenders against illness.

Continuing with the explanation of a CBC, a cat with a long standing abscess would have lots of neutrophils (neutrophilia) if the immune system was staying ahead of the infection, old and ragged looking neutrophils if the body was starting to lose the fight, or maybe hardly any neutrophils visible at all (neutropenia), and the ones that are evident are so toxic looking they are ineffective. A cat with a long-standing infection would also be under stress, so the “stress leukogram” would be superimposed on the above scenario.


I loved the internal medicine aspect of veterinary medicine, and I loved a good sleuthing opportunity. I also enjoyed understanding how the body systems worked, and processing the information I gathered into a diagnosis or explanation for what I was observing in my patient.


The article concludes with this statement:

It's possible that relationship insecurity alone is not enough to make someone vulnerable to illness, according to Picardi, but in conjunction with other factors -- like older age or chronic disease -- it might be enough to worsen a person's health.

There is a psychological theory known as the “Diathesis-Stress Model” that considers behaviors to be a combination and interaction of nature vs. nurture. It postulates that some mental health disorders (for instance, schizophrenia) “…are produced by the interaction of a vulnerable hereditary predisposition, with precipitating events in the environment.” Therefore, it is reasonable to theorize that a genetic predisposition to have difficulty handling stress, compounded by a stressful environment, could produce a person with abnormally high cortisol levels and physiological changes that would occur in the body as a result of those high levels of stress hormones.


So all this is a long-winded explanation for why I believe the results of this study, and frankly, why it really isn’t any big surprise. Poor attachments are bound to create daily stress, and daily stress raises cortisol levels, and high cortisol levels create a stress leukogram, because cortisol is the hormone of stress! So there is your medical lesson for today!

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