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. 2017 Jun;60(6):667-673.
doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2017.01.007. Epub 2017 Mar 15.

Adolescents' Daily Worry, Morning Cortisol, and Health Symptoms

Reout Arbel  1 , Lauren Spies Shapiro  2 , Adela C Timmons  2 , Ilana Kellerman Moss  2 , Gayla Margolin  2
Affiliations

Adolescents' Daily Worry, Morning Cortisol, and Health Symptoms

Reout Arbel et al. J Adolesc Health. 2017 Jun.

Abstract

Purpose: To assess short-term effects of daily worries on hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity and later implications for adolescents' health symptoms. We hypothesized that heightened worry would be associated with stronger next-morning cortisol awakening response (CAR) to prepare the body for the demands of the upcoming day. Guided by biological adaptation to stress theories, we also hypothesized that dysregulated CAR would heighten associations between worries and later health symptoms, while also testing direct associations between worries and dysregulated CAR and health.

Methods: Ninety-nine late adolescents during waves 5 and 6 of a longitudinal study reported on 26 worries for 10 days. On 3 of the 10 days, participants also provided morning saliva samples that were assayed for cortisol to capture the CAR. At both waves, participants reported on 22 common health symptoms.

Results: Multilevel models showed significant within-person associations between high daily worries and next-morning heightened CAR for females. Contrary to expectation, worries were inversely related to concurrent health symptoms. For the whole sample, CAR moderated the effect of worries on later health symptoms: Worries were positively associated with health symptoms in adolescents with high CAR and inversely associated with health symptoms for those with low CAR.

Conclusions: In this sample of typically developing adolescents, worries alone do not increase the risk for common health complaints and may be somewhat protective in the short run. However, high worries in the context of high CAR appear to increase the risk for health symptoms.

Keywords: Adolescence; Cortisol morning awakening; Daily data; HPA axis; Worries.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Cortisol awakening response (CAR) for females and males who reported high worries (above the median) versus low worries (below the median) on the previous day.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Association between daily worries and health symptoms for adolescents with high, average, and low cortisol awakening response (CAR). M = Mean. SD = Standard deviation. Coefficients represent simple slopes. b = unstandardized coefficients. * p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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