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Got a Phobia? Hormone May Help.
Study:
Cortisol Treatments Helped Slay Fears of Spiders and Public
Speaking
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By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Medical News
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The
hormone cortisol may help defuse phobias, new research shows.
 A phobia
is a persistent, excessive fear of a specific object or
situation. Scientists recently studied two small groups of
people with phobias. One group feared public speaking; the
others were extremely afraid of spiders.
Participants faced their fears in the experiment. They were less
fearful if they had taken the corticosteroids cortisol or
cortisone an hour earlier.
Those
steroids may make it harder to recall fearful memories, thus
helping to calm phobias, write Leila Soravia, DrPhil, and
colleagues.
Soravia works at the Institute
of Psychology at Switzerland's University of Zurich. Her study
appears in Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences.
Public
Speaking Phobia
Twenty-one participants feared public speaking. Nine took a dose
of cortisone by mouth. The others took a placebo treatment
containing no cortisone.
An hour
later, participants were given 10 minutes' notice to prepare a
speech pitching themselves for a job. They were also told that
after the speech, they would take a mental math test in front of
an audience.
Participants wore heart rate monitors and self-rated their fear.
After hearing about the speech and math test, heart rates jumped
up for the placebo group but only increased slightly for the
cortisone group. The cortisone group also reported less fear
than the placebo group, the study shows.
Slaying
Spider Fears
The
spider test included 20 people with spider phobias. Half got
oral cortisol; half got a placebo.
An hour
after treatment, participants were shown a color photo of a
large black spider with long legs. The photo included a ruler
showing that the spider's longest legs spanned nearly four
inches.
Participants rated their fear and desire to get away from the
photo. They saw the photo six times. For comparison, no one got
cortisol in the first and last sessions.
Fear fell
for the cortisol group with each session. Those benefits
remained in the last session -- held two days after cortisol
treatment stopped. The placebo group didn't make as much
progress in taming its phobias.
Cortisol
and cortisone showed "potentially beneficial effects in phobia"
but didn't seem to calm general anxiety unrelated to phobias,
Soravia's team writes.
Steroids
aren't typically used to treat phobias or anxiety. They can have
side effects including osteoporosis (thinning of bones) and
diabetes, especially with long-term use.
SOURCES: Soravia, L.
Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, April
4, 2006; vol 103: pp 5585-5590. News release,
Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
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© 2006, WebMD Inc. All rights reserved. |
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Interested in learning more about phobias? Visit our
"cool Site"
section and have a look at "The Phobia List". |
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