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?
Whenever I am stressed, my body’s initial reaction is the feeling of uneasiness. This is followed by an increased heart rate, sweating, and in the worst cases, even trembling. I have always been curious about why I respond to stress through those ways and after studying the endocrine system, specifically the stress response, I acquired that what I usually experience is called the fight-or-flight response. It is a stage of the stress response involved in the mobilization of the body’s resources for immediate physical activity, initiated by nerve impulses from the hypothalamus to the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Because these nerve impulses also reach the adrenal medulla, it stimulates the secretion of epinephrine and norepinephrine or adrenaline and noradrenaline, respectively, which are responsible for the increase in heart rate, force of contraction, and the other physiological responses our body conducts when we experience stress or threats.
Reference:
Tortora, G. & Derrickson, B.(2012). Principles of anatomy and physiology. John Wiley & Sons