58 STRESS AND HEALTH
Nowadays, a range of different types of approach to measuring hassles and other daily
stressors are used. For example, the study described in Research methods 3.3 asked
people to describe their own hassles, which were then categorized by independent raters.
There have also been significant advances in the technologies available to collect and
assess daily stressors, together with other health-related and psychological variables. For
example, mobile phones, tablets, sensors and other ambulatory monitors are now widely
used (Kaplan and Stone, 2013). Mobile technologies represent an exciting way forward
to ‘bring the laboratory and clinic to the community’ (Kaplan and Stone, 2013).
Results
The results showed daily hassles were associated with increased consumption of
high fat/sugar snacks and with a reduction in main meals and vegetable
consumption. Ego-threatening, interpersonal and work-related hassles were
associated with increased snacking, whereas physical stressors were associated
with decreased snacking. In addition, an emotional eating style was found to be the
most important moderator of the hassles–snacking relationship, such that
individuals who had higher levels of emotional eating consumed more snacks in
response to daily stressors.Conclusion
Daily hassles were associated with an increase in unhealthy eating behaviour, with
most marked effects for those who were emotional eaters. These results highlight
an important indirect pathway through which stress influences health risk. More
recently, O’Connor, Armitage and Ferguson (2015) have developed a stress
management support tool to help reduce stress-related unhealthy snacking and to
promote stress-related healthy snacking.
Compared to life events research, less work has examined the relationship
between hassles and health despite the fact that there are strong arguments in
favour of examining the effect of day-to-day events and hassles in order to fully
understand stress-outcome processes. Over 30 years ago, Kanner et al. (1981: 3)
argued that it is ‘day-to-day events that ultimately have proximal significance for
health outcomes and whose accumulative impact... should be assessed’.
Nevertheless, of the existing studies, a number have demonstrated that daily
hassles can have a substantial cumulative effect on health and well-being (e.g.
Zautra, 2003; Almeida, 2005; Kaplan and Stone, 2013). The outcomes that are
measured in this research are rather different to those in the life events literature.
Thus, while researchers looking at major life events have looked at long-term
effects on the likelihood of contracting serious diseases such as cancer, those
looking at daily events have focused on much shorter time scales and linked
hassles to much more proximal changes in physiological markers of stress, or the
occurrence of minor diseases such as colds. This focus has also enabled them to
shed more light on processes whereby stress may impact on disease.