All of this is pretty grim news. In the face of repeated stressors, we may be able to precariously retain the state of allostasis, but it does not come cheap and the efforts to reestablish the balance will eventually wear us down.
Continue reading Stress Relief: A Representation of Stress Response
The generality of the stress response (it is the same for a variety of stressors) was first appreciated about 70 years back by one of the pioneers of the field of stress physiology (Hans Selye). It can be said that the field was born because Selye was a very insightful scientist but very clumsy at handling laboratory rats. His fascinating story starts in the 1930s when lie was just beginning his work on endocrinology (study of hormones). As a young assistant professor he was looking for a promising area of research.
Continue reading Stress Relief: Selye and His Ulcerated Rats
The task of finding the brain hormones that communicated with the pituitary was stupendously difficult. The circulatory system between the brain and the pituitary is miniscule—smaller than the full stop at the end of this sentence. These hormones, if they existed, would be in such minute quantities that they would not be traceable in the general circulation of the blood. The best bet was to look for the traces of these hormones in the tiny bits of tissue at the base of the brain. This tissue contains the blood vessels that go from the brain to the pituitary.
An interesting question to ask is: How are these hormone secretions controlled? Actually, the better question to ask is: who-controls these glands that secrete the hormones? Till the 1930s, it was widely assumed that there was no master control for these hormonal glands and that somehow the glands ‘knew’ what they were doing and responded to various events correctly. With time, scientists determined that the different glands were not autonomous but were under the control of something else.
Continuing with our telephone analogy for brain communication, the body uses both land-based telephones (nerves from the brain to all organs of the body) as well as mobile telephony. The mobile telephones are represented by the hormonal system. We saw that chemical messengers from the sympathetic nerve endings direct the organs to respond to stressful events. If the same chemicals are released into the blood and affect events far and wide, they are called hormones. The hormones are transported in the common medium (blood) just like the mobile telephone messages travel through the air.
The preceding section showed how the brain controls the secretion of various hormones. The interesting point to note is that the brain releases hormones that direct the pituitary to work in two ways—either secrete some hormones or suppress others.
Continue reading Stress Relief: Hormones of the Stress Response
The effects of the hormones depend largely on their concentration in blood and extracellular fluid. Almost inevitably, disease results when hormone concentrations are either too high or too low, and precise control over circulating concentrations of hormones is, therefore, crucial.
Continue reading Stress Relief: Control Systems for Hormone Secretion
This strategy of breaking food into its simplest parts and reconverting it into complex forms for storage is precisely what our body should do when we have eaten plenty. And this is precisely what the body should not do in the face of an immediate physical emergency (stressor). First, the body turns down the parasympathetic nervous system and down goes insulin secretion. Second, the body makes sure that energy storage is stopped. With the onset of stress, the body releases glucocorticoids, which block the transport of nutrients into fat cells. This counteracts the effect of any insulin still floating around.
Continue reading Stress Relief: Energy Mobilization During a Stressor
The basic process of digestion comprises breaking down pieces of animals and vegetables so that they can be transformed into pieces of human body. This may seem facetious but that is the essence of digestion.
So far, in our discussion, we have emphasized how the body has a fairly generalized stress response to any stressor. A physical danger or a purely psychological stress and the response of the body is pretty much the same. Hidden in this generalization are many subtleties. Obviously, a lot of the technical details are beyond the scope of this treatise. However, we will look at some of the aspects that will give an idea of the complications.
Continue reading Stress Relief: Subtleties of the Stress Response