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?
Based on my experience, when I am stressed, I often feel sleepy, tired, dizzy, and have mood swings. Additionally, I also sometimes overthink whether I should face the problem or delay it (fight or flight response), which makes my heart beat faster than usual.
Stress harms the synthesis of melatonin by the pineal organ. It might impair pineal sympathetic inputs resulting in abnormal melatonin release. Moreover, cortisol and melatonin are indirectly proportional; when one is high, the other is low. Hence, since I am always sleepy, my melatonin levels are high, which means my cortisol levels are low. Low levels of cortisol can lead to weakness, sudden dizziness, tiredness, and mood swings, among others.
On the other hand, I also experience the fight or flight response that makes my heart beat faster. Catecholamines (epinephrine and norepinephrine) are hormones from the adrenal medulla that prepare the body to deal with short-term stress or fight or flight by increasing heart rate, and blood pressure and dilating passageways of the lungs.
References:
Kunka, J. (2019, November 25). Melatonin and Cortisol. Thriven Functional Medicine Clinic. https://thrivenfunctionalmedicine.com/melatonin-and-cortisol/
pubmeddev. (n.d.). PubMed - NCBI. Www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16539651/
Society for Endocrinology. (2019, January). Cortisol | You and Your Hormones from the Society for Endocrinology. Yourhormones.info. https://www.yourhormones.info/hormones/cortisol/
Stoltzfus, S. (2012, September 28). Addisonian Crisis (Acute Adrenal Crisis). Healthline; Healthline Media. https://www.healthline.com/health/acute-adrenal-crisis