Activity 1 - My Stress Response
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?
My body's reactions or clinical manifestations that I frequently notice when I'm stressed or experiencing stressors (e.g., time pressure, financial struggles, family problems, or any other circumstance) are increased heartbeat, mood swings, a feeling of being sick, fatigue, and dizziness. Oftentimes, I also experience anxiety, irritability, trouble sleeping, being unfocused, and unmotivated.
Hence, after studying the endocrine system and stress response, I realized the reactions or manifestations that we experience during stressful situations occur in three stages: the fight-or-flight response, resistance reaction, and exhaustion.
1. Flight-or-flight response - conveys our nerve impulses from the hypothalamus to the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system and the adrenal medulla. Additionally, it allows our organs to immediately respond to the stressor by receiving the enormous amounts of oxygen and glucose they require that are most active in warding off danger, including the brain (which must become highly alert), skeletal muscles (which may have to fight off an attacker or flee), and the heart (which must work vigorously to pump enough blood to the brain and muscles).
This stage, therefore, indicates why I am experiencing increased heartbeat and increased mental alertness and why the adrenal gland releases cortisol (a stress hormone).
2. Resistance Reaction - the release of hormones secreted by the hypothalamus, including CRH, TRH, and GHRH, begins in this stage. Resistance reactions stay longer and accelerate breakdown reactions to provide ATP for stress reduction.
This stage enables our bodies to continue resisting a stressor long after the fight-or-flight response has passed. It explains why our hearts continue to beat for a little while after the stressor has subsided. Certain stressful situations, nevertheless, might persist for a very long time. If we don't deal with the stress and keep our bodies on high alert, they eventually learn to cope with more stress, which can result in the exhaustion stage. Therefore, this is the cause of why I am experiencing headaches, frustration, irritation, and poor concentration.
3. Exhaustion - the outcome of the body's resources being depleted during the resistance stage. Long-term exposure to elevated cortisol and other hormones associated with the resistance reaction leads to muscular atrophy and immune system suppression, which can result in more health problems and illnesses.
This stage is regarded to be a result of prolonged or chronic stress because it can tire us physically, emotionally, and cognitively to the point that our bodies are no longer able to combat stress. We may suffer from symptoms such as fatigue, burnout, depression, anxiety, and decreased stress tolerance during this stage.
Whether the perceived stressor is eustress (pleasant or positive) or distress (negative or unpleasant), these alterations will take place in our bodies. Therefore, I conclude that we must actively manage all of our stressors because if we don't, they could accumulate and possibly impair our health.
Reference: Tortora, G. J., & Derrickson, B. (2017). Principles of Anatomy & Physiology. Fifteenth edition; Wiley Loose-Leaf Print Companion. Hoboken, New Jersey, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.