LIFE AND STRESS
Stress is part of everyday life and adaption to stress confers a survival advantage. It can be said that stress is an organism’s response to environmental or psychological pressures in its environment. Successful adaptation requires not only the ability to respond to stress, but also the ability to manage it appropriately. Stress is any situation that seems to threaten homeostatic conditions. This includes infection, malnutrition, restraint strenuous exercise and surgical trauma. The stress-response system is tonically active, but any stressor that exceeds a critical threshold increases its activity further.
TYPES OF STRESS
As human beings, we aim to keep our thoughts, emotions, relationships with the world in a steady state. However, we are faced with challenges every day. How we perceive these changes or challenges around us determines how it affects us. When an individual feels that he/she cannot cope with changes that occur in their environment, such a person starts to feel ‘stressed-out’. This kind of stress is negative and therefore harmful. Negative stress is also called Distress. Distress is associated with stress-related illnesses.
On the other hand, when we see challenges as a chance to grow, or when we feel we are able to cope with changes we are faced with, we are motivated to find ways to meet the challenge or take steps to adapt to the changes we are face with. Motivational stress is Eustress. It is the kind of stress that enables us to achieve in spite of great odds, it arms us to survive in an ever-changing world.
CAUSES OF STRESS
· Lack or loss of control over one’s physical or social environment.
· Lack or loss of one’s social support network
· Physical or Social disadvantage
· Emotions
STAGES OF STRESS
In 1946, Canadian physician Hans Seyle stated that a person under stress undergoes three reactions. These he classified as the stages of stress. These stages are:
The alarm reaction during in which a person has just sensed that they are facing a stressor. During this stage, adrenaline is produced to bring about the fight-flight response. The HPA is also activated to enable the individual cope with the situation.
The there is the Resistance stage. It is during this stage, if the stressor persists that the body begins to realize that it has to cope with the stress. Although the body begins to adapt little by little, it cannot keep this up indefinitely and with continued stress, the demands begin to tell on the body.
The Third and last stage of stress is the Exhaustion stage. At this point, all of the body’s reserves to deal with stress have been exhausted and the body can no longer cope with stress. If it persists (chronic), it may manifest as illnesses such as diabetes, ulcers, depression, cardiovascular diseases or even mental illness.
THE STRESS SYSTEM
The body’s stress system is the same system that responds to physical dangers in our environment. This system is in charge of self-preservation. It alerts us to danger and prepares us to respond to it. The brain, through the senses evaluates and perceives stress, initiates and co-ordinates the appropriate actions when we are under stressful situations. After receiving a stressful challenge and computing the right response, the brain rapidly activates nerves originating from control centres in the brainstem.
The first response is the immediate activation of the sympathetic nervous system. This system causes the flight or fight response we are so familiar with during stressful situations. This causes the release of noradrenalin in a variety of structures and of adrenaline from the adrenal glands (two small glands situated just above the kidneys). The release of adrenaline causes the initial tingling sensation, sweating, heightened awareness, rapid pulse rate, higher blood pressure and general feelings of fear that we all feel in the moments we are faced with a challenging situation. These changes happen because of receptors that are found on blood vessels, causing them to constrict and so causing our blood pressure to increase and in the heart, causing it to increase the rate at which it pumps and produce the pounding sensation in the chest known as palpitations. There are also receptors in the skin causing hairs to erect (piloerection/goose bumps) and in the gut causing that sinking feeling in the abdominal sensations that we all sense as stress. These changes are there to prepare us to fight or to flee - and to concentrate blood flow to vital organs, the muscles and the brain, to increase the supply the energy needed for these activities.
The second major response to stress is activation of a circuit in the brain, the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis which links the body and the brain. This axis, consisting of the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, adrenal cortex and hippocampus are linked by a bloodstream which is the highway through which hormones are transported.
The hypothalamus is the major-regulating centre of the brain, regulating many of the body’s processes and our hormones. It receives strong inputs from areas of the brain responsible for reprocessing emotional information, including the amygdala, and from parts of the brainstem controlling sympathetic nervous responses. It combines all these to produce a co-ordinated hormonal output that stimulates the next part of the circuit - the pituitary gland. In turn, this releases a hormone called adrenocorticotrophin (ACTH) into the blood. ACTH then stimulates a part of the adrenal gland to secrete cortisol. Cortisol is a steroid hormone. It is the most important stress-response hormone.
HOW STRESS AFFECTS YOUR HEALTH
In general, stress hormones are protective and help us adapt in the immediate aftermath of stress. However, when these hormones, especially cortisol are over-produced or not turned off, they can promote damage and accelerate pathophysiological changes such as compromised immunity, bone mineral loss, obesity, and cognitive impairment. This is principally due to the body’s failure to adapt to challenges. This wear and tear has been described as allostatic load. Stress hormones help to mobilize the body’s defence mechanism during times of stress. On the other hand, in cases of chronic stress, they can prove to suppress the immune system.
Besides affecting the immune system, stressors are believed to worsen depressive illnesses. An excess of cortisol in the blood is seen in some chronic brain diseases. In particular, in severe depression, cortisol is over-produced and recent work suggests that the hippocampus also shrinks in this condition. Such findings have led psychiatrists to think of severe depression as severe long-term stress. It is not at all certain that the increased cortisol is the primary cause of this illness rather than it being simply a consequence of severe psychological upset and its attendant stress. However, patients can be markedly helped by blocking the production or action of cortisol, particularly those in whom classical antidepressant drug treatments do not work. Anti-depressant drugs often help to normalise the overactive HPA axis.
Insomnia, eating difficulties, breathlessness without exertion, a tendency to sweat without exertion, frequent intestinal difficulties, loss of sense of humour, constant irritability with people, difficulty with making decisions, suppressed anger, difficulty in concentrating have also been identified as results of unmanaged stress. Studies have also linked obesity with stress.
HOW TO COMBAT STRESS
· Have a Positive Mental Attitude
· Prioritize
· Exercise
· Socialize with people
· Sleep well and Rest well
· Eat Well