Chapter 14: Stress and Health

Chapter 14: Stress and Health Madison Carr, Chase’ Freeman, CJ Jasinski, Bianca Morales, India Speech

Stress and Health • Behavioral medicine: an interdisciplinary field that integrates behavioral and medicinal knowledge and applies that knowledge to health and disease • Health psychology: a subfield of psychology that provides psychology's contribution to behavioral medicine

Stress and Stressors • Stress: The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging. • Stress is how we cope with threats and challenges throughout life. • Stressors are the causes of stress, stress reactions are your physical and emotional responses to stress, and stress is the way you relate to your environment.

Pros of Stress • Momentary stress can mobilize the immune system for fending off infections and healing wounds • Arouses and motivates us to conquer issues • Conquering a stressful event leads to higher self esteem and a sense of purpose

Cons of Stress • Severe stress can lead to a suppressed immune system and progression of diseases

The Stress Response System • Walter Cannon Found that stress response is part of a unified mind-body system • Sympathetic nervous increases heart rate and respiration, diverts blood to the skeletal muscles, dulls pain, releases sugars and fat • Prepares for fight or flight

GAS • General adaption syndrome: Selye’s concept of the body’s adaptive response to stress in three stages • Stage one: Alarm reaction • Stage two: Resistance to stress • Stage three: Exhaustion – vulnerability to disease

Stressful life events • Catastrophes: unpredictable large scale change, example: 9/11 • Significant life changes: life transitions and insecurities example: leaving home, death of a loved one • Daily hassles: everyday annoyances example: school

Stress and the heart • Large amounts of stress lead to elevated blood pressure and increase the risk of coronary disease • Coronary disease: The clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; the leading cause of death in most developed countries

Personalities • Type A: Friedman and Roseman’s term for competitive, hard driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger prone people. These people are more likely of heart disease example: when your history IA is due in one day • Type B: Friedman and Roseman’s term for easygoing, relaxed people example: when your history IA is due in two days

Stress and Susceptibility to Disease • Psycho Physiological Illnesses: “Mind-body” illnesses; any stress related physical illness

Stress and the Immune System • The nervous and endocrine system have an influence on the immune system

Lymphocytes • Lymphocytes: The two types of white blood cells that are part of the body’s immune system: B lymphocytes form in the bone marrow and release antibodies that fight bacterial infection; T lymphocytes form in the thymus and other lymphatic tissue and attack cancer cells, viruses and foreign substances. • B for bone, T for thymus

Immune System Errors • Strong response: May attack the body’s own tissue, causing arthritis or an allergic reaction • Weak response: May allow a dormant disease to erupt or multiply

Stress’s Affect on the Body • Wounds heal slowly: Unstressed participants wounds healed 40% faster • More vulnerable to disease: Unstressed participants were 20% more unlikely to catch a disease • Weakened immune system: Stressed participants showed a 15% below average immune antibody response and a 23% increase in stress hormones • Life shortening: A noticeable characteristic of people who have lived over 100 is their ability to handle stress

Stress and Aids • Aids is the fourth largest cause of death • Infected people with stressful life circumstances exhibit greater disease suppression and a faster disease progression

Stress and Cancer • Stress and negative emotion have been linked to cancer’s rate of progression • People with a history of stress were reported 5.5 times more likely to get colon cancer • Stress doesn’t cause cancer but it weakens the body allowing it to progress

Conditioning the Immune System • Placebo effect on stress • When you think something bad or stressful will occur before it does you still exhibit the symptoms

Coping with stress • Coping: alleviating stress using emotional, cognitive, or behavioral methods • Problem focused coping: attempting to alleviate stress directly – by changing the stressor or the way we interact with that stressor • Emotion focused coping: attempting to alleviate stress by avoiding or ignoring a stressor and attending to emotional needs related to one’s stress reaction

Coping with stress (cont.) • Stress correlates with heart disease, lowered immunity and other bodily ailments • We as individuals need to learn to cope with stress by finding ways to alleviate it

Perceived control • When we perceive a loss of control, we become more likely to get ill health • Perceiving a lack of control can lead to cardiovascular disease and a shorter life span because of an outpouring level of stress hormones

Explanatory style • An influence on coping with stress is whether we are more optimistic or pessimistic • Optimist are more likely to be able to deal with stress because they feel they have more control • Pessimist are statistically more likely to be stress and are more often sick than optimist

Social support • Social support is a large factor in stress • Feeling liked, affirmed, and encouraged by friends or family greatly reduces stress • People with larger amounts of social support have lower blood pressure

Aerobic excersise • Reduces stress, depression and anxiety • Lowers blood pressure, increased arousal, and have higher levels or neurotransmitters to boost blood, and enhances cognitive abilities

Biofeedback • Biofeedback: system for electronically recording, amplifying, and feeding back information regarding a subtle physiological state, such as blood pressure or muscle tension

Relaxation • Can help alleviate headaches, hypertension, anxiety, and insomnia

Meditattion • Cardiologist Herbert Benson became interested with meditative relaxation when he experienced that people that meditate could decrease their blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen consumption

Spirituality and faith communities • The two greatest healing traditions are religion and medicine • Studies have showed that religious people were half as likely to die than those without a religious affiliation

Smoking • Tobacco kills nearly 5 million people out of its 1.3 billion customers, that’s .3% of people • Nicotine is addictive • Harms almost every organ

Helping smokers quit • People that try to quit smoking alone are less likely to quit • Smoking rates remain high with high school drop outs and people of lower socioeconomic level

Obesity and weight control • Our bodies store fat because it’s a fuel reserve to help to continue when food is scarce • However in most of the world food is no longer scarce which has raised the obesity rate

Obesity problems • Heart disease • Rise of diabetes • High blood pressure • Gallstones • Arthritis • Cancer • Shortened life

The social effect of obesity • Stereotypical obese people are….. • Sloppy • Lazy • Slow

The physiology of obesity • Become obese from consuming too many calories • Myth: Cutting your diet by 3,500 calories makes you lose one pound • When you cut calories your body turns to starvation mode • Genetics have an influence on body weight • Average American has become one inch taller over 50 years, and 23 pounds heavier

Losing weight • Most people that lose weight regain it quickly • Most dieters fall back because of stress • This leads to….. • Binge eating • Food obsession • Weight fluctuations • Malnutrition • Smoking • Depression

Chapter 14: Stress and Health