You can see that stress can have more than just emotional and
psychological effects. It can also have serious, even life-threatening, physical effects. To reduce the harmful effects of stress, you need to understand how this process works.
How Our Bodies Adapt to Stress
In his book The Stress of Life, Hans Selye developed and tested a theory about what stress does to people physically. He called it the general adaptation syn- drome, or GAS. According to this theory, when you are first confronted with a stressor, your body responds with an activation of the sympathetic ner- vous system. This has come to be known as the fight-or-flight response. During the fight-or-flight response, your body quickly (in a matter of seconds) gets ready to confront or to escape the stressor by specific physical and chemical reactions. These include increased heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, stomach acid, tensed muscles, and a sudden release of adrenaline. When the fight-or-flight response is activated, according to Selye, you have entered the first stage of GAS, the alarm stage. 12 (See Figure 12.4.)
LEARNING FROM THE OTHER SIDE
Neither a type A nor a type B personality is free from stress. They both deal with stress in different ways, with benefits and risks to each method. Why is it important to learn from the opposite type if you classify yourself according to this personality theory? What can you learn by observing others who act differently under stress than you do?
figure 12.4
SEYLE’S GENERAL ADAPTATION SYNDROME Source: Santrock, Adolescence, 7e. Copyright © 1996. The McGraw-hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Stage 1 Alarm stage Resistance to stress Shock Countershock
Normal level of resistance to stress
Time Stage 2 Resistance
Stage 3 Exhaustion
Hans Selye (1907–1982) was a Canadian doc- tor and medical educator who pioneered research on different types of stress. He began his studies on stress in 1926, during his second year in medi- cal school. He cofounded the Canadian Institute of Stress in 1979, still active today offering training pro- grams and consultations for workplaces and individ- uals, and reporting findings on stress research.
mo re a b o u t...
Taking Charge
An anonymous quote says, “Yesterday is a can- celed check, tomorrow is a promissory note, today is ready cash: Use it!”
mo re a b o u t...
Stressors . . . or Situations?
As one woman said during her treatment for can- cer, “Stop feeling sorry for me! I’m not dying of cancer, I’m just living with cancer!” This rethink- ing of her diagnosis, she says, helped her fight the disease and eventually recover.
mo re a b o u t...
Once the alarm is sounded, you enter the second stage of GAS, the stage of adaptation. You adapt to the stressor and can usually return to normal. As you try to restore lost energy and repair any damage done to your body, your sym- pathetic nervous system is still activated, but not at the high level it was during the alarm stage. As you successfully cope with the stressor, you acti- vate your parasympathetic nervous system. Heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and muscles then relax. Most of the time, people at this stage are able to cope with the stressor and soon return to normal.
In some cases, though, you are not able to adapt to a stressor and can end up using up (or exhausting) all of your physical resources. You then enter the third stage of GAS, the stage of exhaus-
tion. During this stage, the parasympathetic nervous system is still activated, so you appear relaxed, but the stressor is still present. In this stage, you are unable to cope with the prolonged stressor, and you can become vulnerable to other stressors.
As the school term nears an end, for example, stress increases so that during final exams week many students are using up all their stored energy and physical resources. By the end of the term, students have completely used up their energy and resources, and they enter the stage of exhaus- tion. Then, instead of enjoying the break between terms, they may wind up catching a cold or the flu, or becoming accident-prone. The same thing can happen at work when employees exhaust themselves trying to get everything finished and out of the way before they go on vacation. Instead of enjoying their vacation time, they get sick!
Selye would say these students and employ- ees have succumbed to a disease of adaptation. In the most extreme cases, people exposed to pro- longed stress may even die. You may know of a case where an elderly friend or relative fell and broke a hip (because balance declines and bones get more brittle with age), entered the hospital for treatment of the broken hip, and died soon there- after of pneumonia or heart failure. According to Selye’s theory of GAS, if the stress of healing the broken hip was prolonged, then the patient
entered the stage of exhaustion and fell victim to a disease of adaptation (pneumonia or heart failure).
According to Selye, extreme responses to stress may have been essential in early times when people were facing attacks by wild animals. Today, however, these reactions are harmful if they persist. Think about the physical symptoms present during the fight-or-flight response. What happens in the long run, say, when you are stuck in traffic every day during your commute to work and your heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, and stomach acids increase? The muscle tension in your neck, head, and back that appeared because the traffic (a stressor) triggered the alarm stage may, over time, turn into a headache, stiff neck, or backache.
The increased heart rate may eventually turn into cardio-
vascular disease. The increase in blood pressure may turn into hypertension, eventually resulting in a stroke or heart attack. The increase in stomach acid may turn into heartburn, indigestion, or ulcers.
Remember that in Selye’s theory, eustress and distress both produce the physical and chemical changes of the fight-or-flight response because your body cannot tell the difference between the two. Imagine a friend telling you, for example, that he wasn’t able to sleep, had no appetite, felt dizzy and light- headed, and couldn’t concentrate. Without any more information, would you guess that he was coming down with the flu or falling in love? Events that you interpret as good or bad can produce the same physical reactions. They are both stressors because they make demands on your body to adapt or to change. As you have learned, it is adapting to change that is stressful.
Although Selye’s original book is more than 50 years old, its theories are supported even more today by the work of health psychologists and medi- cal researchers who study long-term effects of stress and the relationship of stress to the immune system.
In a “meta-analysis” (a study of studies) made public in 2004, researchers examined the results of almost 300 studies that took place over a 40-year span (1960–2000) and included almost 20,000 people. What they
found supported Selye’s ideas about the GAS’s stages of alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. In the short term, stress gets the immune system “revved up” and ready to fight the stressor. In the long term, though, chronic stress wears down the immune system, and immunity begins to break down. This long-term wear and tear makes the immune system much less able to fight new stressors as they come along, or handle continuing stress- ors. Not surprisingly, these researchers also found that people who were at risk—for example, who were elderly or already ill—
had the worst outcomes. This research reminds us of the impor- tance of keeping stressors in check, and finding ways to manage the possible damage of long-term, chronic stress. 13
INCREASE HEALTH BY DECREASING STRESS By paying attention to factors such as nutrition, exercise, and proper sleep, you can avoid the debilitating long-term effects of most types of stress. What do you do to strengthen your body against stress?
Adding Fuel to the Fire
Researchers found that one reason people with type A behaviors are more susceptible to coronary artery disease is that they are also more likely to smoke and to eat high-choles- terol foods. Reducing stress and learning to relax may reduce the “need” to smoke, which then reduces the risk of heart disease.
Source: From The Harvard Heart Letter, President and Fellows of Harvard College, January 1992 p. 104.
mo re a b o u t...
The Connection between Chronic Illness and Stress
The American Psychological Association’s annual Stress in America survey (2012) found that U.S.
adults with a chronic illness generally lack sup- port for stress and behavior management when compared to Americans overall, and compared to those who do not have a chronic illness.
Americans suffering from chronic illness are less likely than those without a chronic illness to say they are managing their stress well (59% ver- sus 66%). Those living with a chronic illness do not generally receive better stress management support—half of those with a chronic illness (51%) see their health care provider three or more times annually compared with only 17 percent of those without.
For Americans with a chronic illness who say they get little or no stress management or behav- ioral support from their health care provider, stress is on the rise–41 percent reported that their level of stress increased in the past year, compared with 35 percent of Americans overall.
Source: American Psychological Association, Stress in America ™ : Missing the Health Care Connection, March 2013 (accessed March 20, 2013 at http://www.apa.org ).
mo re a b o u t...
Stress and the Immune System
The immune system serves three basic functions. Briefly, these include:
1. Recognizing foreign cells and attacking them.
2. Developing antibodies to recognize foreign invaders in the future.
3. Sending white blood cells and other helper cells to the location of an injury or infection to speed healing.
Just by having chronic stress, you can actually weaken your immune sys- tem and fall victim to an illness that you would normally fight off with ease.
Medical research is finding evidence that even serious chronic illnesses such as cancer are linked to stress as well. Because your immune system is weakened by stress, anything from the common cold to an uncommon cancer is more likely to invade when you are under stress for long peri- ods of time. Other stress-related illnesses can include asthma, ulcers, colitis, skin disorders such as eczema or hives, allergies, strokes, and heart attacks. Medical research suggests that the effects of stress can strike back as long as 20 years later.
Men who were highly anxious in middle age, stud- ies show, are much more likely 20 years later to have high blood pressure than men who had a calmer outlook on life. 14
You can probably recognize the fight-or-flight feelings of immediate stressors, but how can you know when you are overstressed? Take the stress self-test at the end of this chapter to find out how much stress you are under. How can you recog- nize excessive stress in other people? Researchers have found that people under stress may act rest- less, impatient, competitive, and pressured. They may have had recent changes in work or personal lives that would help explain the excessive stress. 15 (See Figure 12.5 for ways managers can reduce workplace stress.)