According to the National Cancer Institute, every year nearly 70,000 people are diagnosed with melanoma. Experts said the stress of dealing with that diagnosis can actually help the cancer grow.

"Studies have shown that psychological stress affects the immune system, and in that way, that's the mechanism by which cancers are able to progress," said Dr. Eric Yang, a research at the James Cancer Hospital and Sloave Research Institute.

Yang has studied the connection at Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center. In the lab, scientists added human stress hormones to tumors and saw the number of cancerous proteins increase by nearly 2,000 percent. The more stress hormones that were added, the more likely the cancers cells were to grow.

Scientists tried something novel. Using common drugs called beta blockers, they were able to reverse the process. The beta blockers kept stress hormones away and kept tumors from growing.

Experts said the finding is especially encouraging since beta blockers have already been used safely for some 30 years.

"It's a common drug, it's not toxic, people take blood pressure medication all the time. That's exactly what people take - we take beta blockers if you have high blood pressure and it's perfectly innocuous," said Dr. Ronald Glaser of the James Cancer Hospital.

So far the research is still in the lab. There is no word yet on human trials.

Scientists at Ohio State said other cancers may show a similar response to beta blockers, especially cancers of the head and neck, ovarian cancer and multiple myeloma.

"If we could make it work, it should have proof positive implications for people with a lot of different kinds of tumors," said Glaser.

For more information on the research, click here