Stress helps you meet your daily challenges and motivates you to reach your goals, ultimately making you a smarter, happier, and healthier person. However, when you are stressed, what body reactions or clinical manifestations do you often experience? After studying the endocrine system and the stress response, can you explain how these clinical manifestations occur?
When I suddenly encounter or experience stressors, such as unprecedented close calls for accidents, excessive bleeding from wounds, and other occurrences, I notice my general body reactions or clinical manifestations of the stress. During these stressful situations, I notice that my heart beats faster than usual, my alertness is greatly enhanced, and I sometimes feel exhausted afterward.
After studying the endocrine and the stress response, I realized that these reactions or manifestations are explained by the three stages of the body’s stress response.
First, an initial fight-or-flight response signaled by nerve impulses from the hypothalamus to the parasympathetic nervous system and adrenal medulla mobilizes my body’s resources. This helps my organs I need receive large oxygen and glucose amounts to the organs to quickly respond to the stressor. This explains my fast heartbeats and enhanced alertness as my heart strenuously pumps adequate blood to my brain and muscles, and my brain becomes highly alert to respond to the stressor.
Second, my body’s resistance reaction then aids me to continue to respond to the stressor even though my fight-or-flight response has already been long finished. During this, hormones such as CRH and GHRH stimulate the anterior pituitary gland to secrete more hormones and enable the body to perform various functions to prolong the body’s response. This explains why my heart rate is still fast even though the stressor has already been dealt with.
Lastly, I sometimes feel tired because of the third stage– exhaustion. My body’s resources may soon be consumed to the point where I cannot carry out the resistance reaction stage anymore. Extended periods of exposure to several hormones in the resistance reaction results in my exhaustion. Moreover, my body organs may be compromised and downright affected.
Overall, it still amazes me how learning about the endocrine system deepens my understanding of my stress responses which I initially thought to be a much simpler process. It helped me appreciate my body more and handle it properly.
Reference:
Tortora, G. J., & Derrickson, B. (2012). Principles of Anatomy and Physiology (13th ed.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.