A stress vaccine? Probably!

According to CBS News.com “Dr Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscience professor at Stanford, says after 30 years of studying stress, his team might be on the verge of a novel cure” for stress. It seems that “unlike some animals, humans are unable to turn off stress chemicals used for the fight-or-flight mechanism. A class of hormone called glucocorticoids are one of the chief offenders”. So he and his team have “pioneered a way to bootstrap a "herpes virus to carry engineered 'neuroprotective' genes deep into the brain to neutralize the rogue hormones before they can cause damage"”.

The Cleveland Leader adds that Sapolsky said: “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 digestion”. He added that once this vaccine finally hit the market, “it has the potential to "change society"”.

For now they only have tested on rats and it seems that it will take years before the trials starts on humans. So, even if this could be good news, for the moment you should keep trying yoga, and other techniques…

To read the complete study click here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18797472?dopt=Abstract&otool=stanford

By Patricia Rivero.