How Stress Impact Negatively on Physical Health

1 How Stress Impact Negatively on Physical Health Introduction Stress is the preceding occurrence when needs such as environmental and internal exceed the coping abilities of a person, the society or body organs. Stress is, thus, a response to various challenges of life. Stress is considered as an upset of the homeostasis process as it is due to external or internal needs expected of the body. The body systems involved in the physiology of stress include, “the nervous system, the endocrine system, and the immune system”. Once a person’s ability to withstand challenges is overwhelmed, a prolonged duration of exhaustion sets in, which may eventually present in form of illness. Though there is no strong linear association between negative physical health and stress, sufficient evidence shows that stress is a contributing factor to the etiology of many diseases, especially because of the tendency to trigger risk factors for various diseases.

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People who experience elevated stress in their lives have been reported to age earlier, undergo more depression and decline earlier in functional capabilities, physically and mentally. People who experienced stress in their early years of life are at higher risks of being depressed, abuse drugs, in addition to being at an increased risk of dying earlier and suffer morbidity from many diseases (Folkman, 2010).

Over the past few decades, a lot of research has been carried out to determine the relationship between stress and physical health. Through these studies, it has been established that stress can negatively impact on physical health as it subjects people to increased risk of developing a number of illnesses. Studies have implicated stress as a trigger of depression, cardiovascular disease, acquired immune immune-deficiency syndrome, and cancer (McEwen & Tucker, 2011).

How Stress is triggered?

When subjected to stressing situations, people may react in different ways. For example, when a person faces a stressor that challenges his or her ability to control a situation, noradrenaline, a catecholamine fight hormone is predominantly secreted. This hormone is the major neurotransmitter in the sympathetic nervous system and usually causes tonic and reflexive changes in the cardiovascular tissues. When the level of stress is highly increased and the person perceives the possibility of losing control, another catecholamine hormone called adrenaline is released. Adrenaline is a flight or anxiety hormone that plays a major role in influencing metabolic challenges to homoeostasis and manifestation of emotional distress. Sustained stress for a long time makes a person to be distressed and losses hope, leading to stimulation of the hypothalamus. Stimulation of the hypothalamus results into activation of a cascade of other hormonal pathways, eventually leading to the secretion of cortisol from the adrenal cortex

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(McEwen & Tucker, 2011). The adrenal cortex can also secrete cortisal in response to fasting, consumption of food, physical activity, and awakening. Cortisol is usually secreted in a sporadic manner.

The main roles of cortisal involve control and mobilization of energy. In controlling energy, this hormone targets a particular food substrate for metabolism to meet the energy needs of the body. In energy mobilization, cortisal helps in the mobilizing triglycerides from storage tissues into the tissues deprived of energy. Other functions of cortisol include mobilization of protein for energy metabolism, enhancing maturation of adipocytes, and acting as an antiinflammatory agent (McEwen, 2007).

The brain is the main organ of stress responses since it identifies potential threats, and the resultant physiological and behavioral response pathways, which may be beneficial or harmful.

The brain is able to selectively activate specific responses whenever a person is faced with situations that challenge his or her level of control (Allen, 1983). The stress mechanisms work in combination, but their effect on body functioning mechanisms is unique. Thus, responses to stress such as flight and flight increase cardiac cycle and elevated release of fatty acids into the circulation. The defeat response causes increased fat synthesis, enhances visceral obesity, accelerates the disintegration of body tissues, and inhibits the immune responses (Contrada & Baum, 2010).

When a person experiences a stressor, the body sends signals to the hypothalamus, which in turn stimulates both the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine systems. This causes increases in the heart beat, blood pressure, the rate of metabolism, respiration, in addition to regulating body fluids. Other effects of the hormones and other chemicals released due to the fight-flight responses include dilatation of arteries, brochial tubes, high gastrointestinal

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movements, and increase in intensity and rate of respiration (Allen, 1983). Though stress is often helpful, its persistence to chronic, harmful levels, result into deleterious consequences like impairing the immune system, weight gain and developmental disorders. Stress also causes other health problems associated with stress including asthma, hypertension, arthritis, and diarrhea, among many others (McEwen, 2007).

When a person perceives loss of control and adaptation to a stressor, irritation, emotional disturbance, and physical exhaustion sets in. Stress responses, thus, culminate in the activation of the autonomic nervous system through the stimulation of the hypothalamus, pituitary gland and adrenal gland (Guyton & Hall, 2000). Whereas people require the normal stress hormone response to survive challenging events or situations, they are also prone to adverse effects as a result of extended stimulation and release of the stress hormones. The sustained release of these hormones may arise from stressor like anxiety, frequent exposure to environmental irritants, social misunderstandings, changes in the way of living, and health related habits as a result of chronic stress (Contrada & Baum, 2010).

How Stress Impairs with Physical Health Stress is associated with various physiological changes in the immune responses, endocrine, metabolism, immune responses, cardiac events, and the nervous system. This potentially affects the brain and body, resulting into poor physical health (Krantz et al. 2000).

Stress influences physiological parameters like blood oxygen level and pH, hence impacting the homeostasis process. Most negative physical health outcomes such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases are enhanced by inflammatory reactions, which are also stimulated by stressors (Guyton & Hall, 2000).

Physiological Pathways of Stress that Lead to Negative Physical Health

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The impact of stress on physiological processes like the immune and inflammatory responses influence the progress of physical health conditions such as depression, infectious diseases, autoimmune disease, and some forms of cancers like those caused by retroviruses.

Persistent stressors have been shown to reduce the effectiveness of the immune responses with time. Stress causes immune system changes in the spleen and lymphatic tissues. People who are stressed are at a higher risk of being affected with autoimmune diseases such as arthritis and sclerosis. In addition, stresses compromises the immune making one prone to many opportunistic infections (Guyton & Hall, 2000).

Studies on cancer patients have yielded evidence to show that stress stimulates specific pathways that enhance tumor development, progression and metastasis (McEwen, 2007).

Persistent stress in cancerous patients dysregulates the body immunity through the inhibition of immunological responses that confer protection against viruses and carcinogenesis, but enhances the mechanisms that render the body vulnerable to autoimmune disorders and carcinogenesis, for instance by the synthesis of cytokine type II (Glase & Kiecolt-Glaser, 2005). Through hormonal activation, persistent stress causes over-stimulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis causing continuous secretion of cortisal, which subsequently results into physiological changes (McEwen, 2007). In addition, the over-stimulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis triggers the secretion of stress hormones like adrenaline and noradrenaline, which also activate some classes of receptors such as beta receptors. Once these receptors are activated by the binding of the hormones, channels involved in triggering of inflammatory responses are stimulated besides the enhancement of angiogenesis and inhibition of the immune reactions against malignancy (Guyton & Hall, 2000).

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Further studies have also demonstrated that in HIV infected people, stress tends to enhance the progress to AIDs, especially because of the impacts stress has on adherence to treatment regimens. The changes in the autonomic nervous system due to stress encourage the replication of the HIV virus, thus worsening the disease. It is also suggested that the variations observed in the progress of HIV infections in different patients, and the diverse responses to medications may be caused by stress (Hawkley & Cacioppo, 2003). It has also been demonstrated that endocrine and cardiovascular reactivities due to stress such as the influence on blood pressure, cardiac cycle and excretion of catecholamines are risk factors for the development of cardiovascular diseases like myocardial infarction and coronary heart disease (Ely, 1995; William, 1999).

The increased secretion of cortisol increases during stress increases the likelihood of developing obesity. This is because cortisol plays a direct role in the consumption of foods by attaching to certain receptors in the hypothalamus thereby stimulating a person to consume foods rich in fats and sugars. Through its regulatory roles in the release of substances like corticotrophin releasing hormone and leptin during stress, cortisol also indirectly increases appetite. Persistent release of cortisol in large amounts and for a long duration cause cellular and tissue changes in the body. The increased levels of cortisol mobilize triglycerides and excess fats in blood and deposit them into visceral layers of the abdomen, which if not regulated, may lead to obesity (Rosmond, Dallman & Bjorntorp, 1998). Furthermore, studies show that hypertension, increased lipid levels and high glucose levels are associated with high amounts of cortisol, thus raising the likelihood of a person becoming diabetic, having cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disorders (Jones, 2001).

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People experiencing stress also suffer negative affects like anxiety, loneliness, persistent rumination, depression, and worries, which ultimately compromise one’s health. Research has shown that negative affect, for instance optimism, makes one healthy, while depression is a precursor of illnesses. Negative affect causes physiological changes such as impairing with the immune system and raising the blood pressure (O’Leary, 1990). Depression has also been shown to predispose individuals to premature death. Patients having heart disease and are depressed are at a greater risk of succumbing to the condition much earlier as compared to those who are not depressed. It has been found out that stress triggers depression and also causes relapse of depression in individuals who have recovered from it, indicating that stress contributes to negative physical health. Stressors like divorce and demise of a beloved person are the main causes of depression (Contrada & Baum, 2010).

Behavioral Pathways of Stress that Lead to Negative Physical Health In behavioral pathways, stress may make people to adopt health compromising behaviors such as smoking, consumption of alcohol, sedentary lifestyle, unbalanced diet, and sleep deprivation among others, so as to relieve their tension. People having stress may be too involved with the challenges facing them to monitor what they eat and engage in health behaviors. They may also not have the ability to follow the usual self-care tasks. For those who use tobacco, stress may make them smoke heavily by increasing the number of cigarettes smoked, as well as the intensity through deep inhalation (Wolkowitz, Epel & Reus, 2001).

Studies have shown that when stressed, females tend to adopt unhealthy eating habits, whereas men turn to consumption of alcohol and substance use. Stressful experiences during childhood make individuals to be involved in high-risk behaviors that have deleterious health impacts.

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These unhealthy habits often persist into adulthoods as coping strategies against stresses like rejection and abuse (Lorentz, 2006).

In HIV infected patients, behavioral pathways due to stress such as unbalanced diet, heavy smoking and lack of physical activities may enhance the progress of AIDs. AIDs patients having stress are often deprived of sleep and they tend not to involve themselves in exercises.

They also adopt poor eating habits, tend to smoke heavily and do not adhere to treatment regimens (O’Leary, 1990). Lack of sleep or poor sleeping habits is related to increased body weight and obesity. Other consequences of deprived sleep include elevation of blood pressure, reduced parasympathetic stimulation, elevated cortisol and insulin amounts, and increases desire for food as a result of increased secretion of ghrelin hormone and reduced amount of leptin. Poor sleep also triggers increased activation of cytokines, which promotes inflammatory responses.

Studies have also linked deprivation of sleep to cognitive disorders due reduced growth of cells in dentate gyrus (Vgontas & Kales, 1999).

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