El miedo como factor de predicción en la enfermedad

Abstract

Background: Fear is an element that has always accompanied humanity and the human being throughout its history and where aspects such as biological, psychological and social intervene together, which has given rise to the origin of many foundations that are part of our culture along with the way we live together in our society, a life that we normally lead surrounded by stress and anxiety thus favoring a low activity of our immune system and therefore greater predisposition to develop alterations in our state of health. Method:The study is a systematic literature review where the questions that guided our study were "Fear and Health, and Fear and Disease". We reviewed information in the Virtual Library of the Public Health System "Gerión" and Pubmed; we could see how in the latter practically the same results were repeated, so finally all the rest of the search we ended up doing it in the PUBMED search engine from which we have selected some aspects related to the subject to study, we have seen its relationship with cancer, fear of breast cancer, Parkinson or cultural aspects among others, to end up explaining what are the mechanisms of action of fear in health; discussion and conclusions. Results:The circuit of fear organizes defense mechanisms in response to threats related to the environment in which we find ourselves, a circuit that is evolutionarily crucial to survival. We have seen how it favours the growth of tumours, how it alters the response of the immune system, the negative impact it has on the quality of life of patients, or how those people who present exclusive states of fear are more likely to suffer from heart disease in the future. Conclusions:It is not bad to be afraid in a certain situation since it is beneficial in a moment of danger, but it is not so bad when we live continuously under that situation, nowadays we are practically afraid of everything, of getting sick, of not being able to make ends meet, of having an accident, of losing our job, and especially of death, a fact that we should have already assumed from the very moment we were born. We must not forget that fear blocks our immune system and therefore we are more exposed to develop alterations in our state of health.