Stress and Its' Effects on Health
English I
19 December 2012 The Effects of Stress on Health The term “stress” is derived from the Latin word stringere, or to draw tight. Stress causes blood capillaries to close, which restricts bleeding if a flesh wound should occur. Your pupils dilate during a stressful event much the same way they do in response to a physical attraction: to gather more visual information about a situation. Chronic stress floods the brain with powerful hormones and chemicals that are meant for short term emergency situations. All that long term exposure can damage, shrink and kill the brain cells. Stress increases the risk of pre-term labor and intrauterine infection. Additionally, chronic levels of stress place a fetus at a greater risk for developing stress related disorders and affect the fetus’s temperament and neurobehavioral development. Post-traumatic stress physically changes children’s brains; specifically, stress shrinks the hippocampus, a part of the brain that stores and receives memories. In 1967 two researchers, Doctors Holmes and Rahe concluded that there is a strong but real relationship between selected “life events” and illness. Their study was based on over five thousand patients that supported a widely held belief that stressful life events are a strong contribution to the onset of disease-not only psychosomatic disorders but also infectious diseases as well (Freid 37) The effects of stress on health are many including chronic and acute stress, worsening of numerous health conditions, causing addictive behaviors in those predisposed to it and is a major contributor to hyperventilation syndrome. The real problem with stress is that for such a well understood and universally experienced condition, as a society we deal with it so poorly, that it leads to many of our most lethal illnesses and long term health problems. Cardiovascular Disease, Obesity, Alzheimer’s Disease, Diabetes, Depression
19 December 2012 The Effects of Stress on Health The term “stress” is derived from the Latin word stringere, or to draw tight. Stress causes blood capillaries to close, which restricts bleeding if a flesh wound should occur. Your pupils dilate during a stressful event much the same way they do in response to a physical attraction: to gather more visual information about a situation. Chronic stress floods the brain with powerful hormones and chemicals that are meant for short term emergency situations. All that long term exposure can damage, shrink and kill the brain cells. Stress increases the risk of pre-term labor and intrauterine infection. Additionally, chronic levels of stress place a fetus at a greater risk for developing stress related disorders and affect the fetus’s temperament and neurobehavioral development. Post-traumatic stress physically changes children’s brains; specifically, stress shrinks the hippocampus, a part of the brain that stores and receives memories. In 1967 two researchers, Doctors Holmes and Rahe concluded that there is a strong but real relationship between selected “life events” and illness. Their study was based on over five thousand patients that supported a widely held belief that stressful life events are a strong contribution to the onset of disease-not only psychosomatic disorders but also infectious diseases as well (Freid 37) The effects of stress on health are many including chronic and acute stress, worsening of numerous health conditions, causing addictive behaviors in those predisposed to it and is a major contributor to hyperventilation syndrome. The real problem with stress is that for such a well understood and universally experienced condition, as a society we deal with it so poorly, that it leads to many of our most lethal illnesses and long term health problems. Cardiovascular Disease, Obesity, Alzheimer’s Disease, Diabetes, Depression