Can extreme chronic depression or anxiety event cause or promote cancer somewhere in the body?

Extreme anxiety and depression cannot cause cancer directly . What it can do is affect our health by lowering our immune system. so we may be more unable to fight off certain viruses or bacteria‘s or even the common cold which of course is a virus.

that doesn’t mean that this is definitely going to happen to everybody with anxiety and depression.

I know people who have had that for years and years and never got cancer. What’s important to do is take care of ourselves by eating a very healthy diet which many people lack. Staying away from junk food, sugar which is an inflammatory agent, smoking, too much alcohol, etc.

are are you taking any medication?

i have had anxiety and depression for over 35 years and never had cancer.

so mental attitude is also extremely important! Work towards looking at life in a different way with a more positive attitude and it’s really important to have some fun, laugh, spend times with family and friends. It’s been proven that these things actually push the immune system! I force myself to snap out of bad moods and start telling myself the things that I am grateful for and the things that I’m going to do to increase happiness and joy every day!

the worst thing we can do is sit around and ruminate about how bad we feel. That’s very unhealthy for the entire body. I do hope you start to feel a little better. Go on YouTube and listen to some positive videos and joy and happiness and how not to stay in your head worrying about everything which does absolutely no good. I do hope you feel better soon take care

also you can l actually make positive changes in your brain by exercise! That has actually been proven. even if it’s just going on walks.

Thank you very much Jan! Thank you for the really Great reply, Information and advice. Very helpful. I'm not on any meds. I do a lot of exercise but a harmless social situation sent me an into kind of a depression where I couldn't get out of bed and kept done ruminating and fixating on the event. My body was feeling like it was almost it's self-destructing as I was lying there in full anxiety mode. That event happened about 11 months ago. There was residual anxiety on and off. It seems to have ended now. One thing that happened wasn't January I had an extreme vertigo event have to go to the hospital. They figured the problem was peripheral in the ear area. I almost feel that bad extreme anxiety I had created that vertigo event months later. Lately I've been very upset that I got myself into such a tizzy and thought what if I've created something worse.

so when we ruminate about the past or worry about the future, that stirs up negative thoughts. I listen to a meditation that I really like and it talks about how we need to stay in the present moment. Nothing exists except that. The past does not exist anymore and the future does not exist when you are in the present moment, they only exist in our mind but the thoughts we get about worrying about the future are just illusion because they’re not based on any fact.

It really has been helping me and I’m training my brain to stay out of the past and the future. The more you do it, the stronger your brain becomes and those horrible thoughts diminish or even go away. I am actually retraining my brain that way. It’ll take a while but I have to do it.

also, vertigo is definitely related to anxiety. It’s amazing how anxiety just stays on simmer until one day it just explodes. That’s why we have to really work on ourselves every day.

I suggest that you really try and change the mental negativities because when we think negative, it has a negative affect on every part of our body.

I actually developed gastritis from the years of anxiety and stress. There is a very strong connection between the brain and the gastrointestinal system. That is why you hear of people who are highly stressed who have ulcers.

hope you are feeling better soon. Remember, catch yourself when you get anxious or stressed out or upset and then do some slow long deep breathing and remind yourself that you are going to take steps daily to turn this around. There’s great videos and anxiety and how to help it on YouTube. Take care

Sure stress can mess with your bodies immune system , that's why if you had chicken pox as a kid, under stress you might get shingles. Stress just makes it harder for your body to fight off stuff