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?
Short-term stress or eustress makes me more productive, thus I consider it beneficial for me. Stress responses vary among people and even for the same person at different times. In my case, I usually experience exhaustion, headaches, and digestive problems. Other clinical manifestations of stress that I observe in myself are the feeling of irritability and chest pains.
According to the lecture, the stress response occurs in 3 stages:
Huge amounts of glucose and oxygen are produced in the organs that are most active in stress when the fight-or-flight response is activated. These organs include the brain (making it alert), heart (must pump enough blood, explaining the increased heart beat), and muscles (contraction results in headache or soreness of the body).
The resistance reaction stage is a longer-lasting response compared to fight-or-flight. Observed in this stage is the secretion of the cortisol hormone which increases glucose metabolism and stress resistance.
However, if the stress response does not stop firing, exhaustion might ensue. It occurs when the body’s resources become depleted. Prolonged exposure to high levels of cortisol results in various pathological changes. Exhaustion explains why chronic stress may lead to a weakened immune system, ulceration of the GI tract (since stress response also increases stomach acid), anxiety, depression, hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes.
Tortora, G. J., & Derrickson, B. H. (2012). Principles of Anatomy and Physiology. Wiley.