Stress and how it effects Us
An everyday incident, an annoyance at work or a discussion with our spouse, we feel that the heart us accelerates and beats with unusual force. We experience a heater in the face and began to sweat. Have who not has felt something similar on more than one occasion? These are not but some of the manifestations of what we know as stress. However stress is much more. It presents a series of demonstrations not so easily recognizable that, however, they can have very harmful effects. On the other hand, they are not only which usually regard as problematic or negative situations which can increase our level of stress. News that causes us sudden joy according to many researchers might also cause an also sudden rise in our level of stress.
It has been estimated that in the United States 43% of adults suffer from the adverse effects of stress and that between 75 and 90 percent of visits to doctors are for conditions they relate in some way to this. Stress is related to many of the leading causes of death such as cancer, heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver, lung diseases, accidents and suicide. According to Dr. Paul Rosch President of the American Institute of Stress stress has become the most common health in the United States problem. As we will see later, stress can have as one of its effects early death and premature aging.
During the 1920s the neurologist and American physiologist Walter B. Cannon discovered that when a body is afraid or is facing an emergency your brain responds by activating the sympathetic nervous system. When this sucerde, heart rate and breathing are accelerated, the blood leaves the surface layers of the skin and moves towards the muscles providing a greater amount of oxygen. All this enables the Agency to respond to the emergency well be fighting or fleeing from it.
When this state of emergency extends produces a more complex answer that Hans Selye, endocrinologist doctor of Austrian origin who developed his career in Canada, called the General adaptation syndrome. Selye understood that this prolonged stress condition causes damage to the body mainly to cause at the elevation of adrenaline and hormone corticosteroid secreted by the adrenal glands.
Physiologists have known for long that stress can cause premature aging in laboratory animals. When an animal is subjected to conditions of continuous stress his body begins to suffer a series of havoc and dies after a few days. To make the autopsy are numerous signs of deterioration and premature aging. A similar situation occurs in humans. When the stress exceeds certain limits affect many organs of our body like our mental capacity and the immune system.
In normal situations our body’s cells employ around 90% of its energy in metabolic activities aimed at the renovation, repair and creation of new tissues. This is what is known as anabolic metabolism. However in situations of stress this changes drastically. Instead of activities aimed at the renovation, repair and creation of tissue the body dedicated to send massive amounts of energy to the muscles. To achieve this the body changes to what is known as a catabolic metabolism. Repair and creation of the Corps activities are paralyzed and even the body begins to break down the tissues in search of energy that so urgently needs
In antiquity the stress mechanism serving the purpose of preparing human beings to respond to States of emergency that they represented a physical threat. How to respond to this kind of emergency was, generally speaking, fleeing or fighting, answers to which requires a large amount of energy and muscle strength. Other physiological alterations occurring in States of stress and hormonal changes are aimed to achieve this. Imagine a primitive person of the caves has confronted the unthinkable attack by a wild animal. The body of this Caveman prepares to respond to the threat. The muscles tighten, breathing becomes rapid and shallow, hunger and sexual desire are deleted, the digestive process stops, the brain is placed in a State of high alert and senses sharpen. The adrenal glands begin to launch towards the stream blood several hormones, which are known as hormones of stress, including cortisol and adrenaline (also known as epinephrine) that help increase the production of energy and muscle strength.
In our modern society, we don’t have to face usually wild animals (at least in the literal sense of the term). However, we face situations of other types such as problems at work, or marriage, with the same mechanisms with which our ancestors faced wild animals. The problem arises because changes in society have been shaped as fast they have not allowed the evolutionary process, which is extremely slow, adapt to them. When compared with the hundreds of thousands of years humans on earth we will see that civilized life is a very recent condition. We are therefore using even mechanisms were developed to deal with hazards that commonly presented in the life of the caverns.
In cave life States of emergency lasted a few minutes at most. Once the emergency, the level of hormones secreted and physiological processes returned to its normal state. In our modern society the stress mechanism activated not so much because of momentary dangers but because prolonged emotional States (such as, for example, a situation of marital unhappiness) or they recur daily (as, for example, the plug to go and to come back from work). Under such circumstances the adrenaline, cortisol and other hormones which are secreted may begin to cause great damage to our body. These damages include: fatigue, destruction of muscles, diabetes, hypertension, ulcers, dwarfism, impotence, loss of sexual desire, cessation of menstruation, increased susceptibility to diseases, and damage to the nerve cells.
Some scholars suggest that the most impressive of these damages is the fact that, taken together, are very similar to what happens in the aging process.
