Stress and Health

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Stress and Health

• 515-521

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How does it feel to be stressed?
What events / situations do you think are the
most stressful?
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What is stress?

• A negative emotional state occurring in response
  to events that are perceived as taxing or
  exceeding a persons resources or ability to
  cope.

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Stress and Health

• Behavioral Medicine
• interdisciplinary field that integrates
  behavioral and medical knowledge and applies that
  knowledge to health and disease
• Health Psychology
• subfield of psychology that provides psychologys
  contribution to behavioral medicine

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Bio-Psycho-Social Model

• Health and illness are determined by the complex
  interaction of biological, psychological, and
  social factors.

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Sources of Stress

• Stressors events or situations that produce
  stress. Could be positive or negative!
• Social Readjustment Scale by Holmes and Rahe
• Event requires person to adjust or adapt stress
• More than 150 points in a year likelihood of
  physical or psychological illness
• More than 300 likelihood of exhaustion/
  disorders

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The Stress Response System

• Endocrine system interacts with stress
• Stressful stimulus ? activates sympathetic
  nervous system ? activates hormones adrenaline
  and noradrenaline
• Walter Cannon calls this your fight or flight
  response

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General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

• Rats exposed to stressful situations over long
  periods of time ? immune systems
• Shrinkage of thymus and lymph glands keys to
  immune system

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GAS

• Stages of GAS by Hans Selye
• Alarm Stage intense arousal
• Resistive Stage body actively tried to resist
  or adjust to continual stress
• Exhaustion stage adaptation breaks down

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Stress and Illness

• General Adaptation Syndrome
• Selyes concept of the bodys adaptive response
  to stress in three stages

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Stress Appraisal
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Stress and the mind-body connection

• How we appraise or respond to stressful events
  maybe as important as the event itself.
• Debbie Downer clip

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Stressful Life Events

• Catastrophic Events
• earthquakes, combat stress, floods
• Life Changes
• death of a loved one, divorce, loss of job,
  promotion
• Daily Hassles
• rush hour traffic, long lines, job stress,
  burnout
• The most significant source of stress
• For some little stressors can add up and take a
  toll on health and well being

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Stressful Life Events

• Chronic Stress by Age

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Perceived Control

• Health consequences of a loss of control

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Perceived Control

• Equality and Longevity

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Stress, Personality, and Heart Disease

• 521-528

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Stress and Illness

• Leading causes of death in the US in 1900 and 2000

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Stress and the Heart

• Coronary Heart Disease
• clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart
  muscle
• leading cause of death in many developed
  countries

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Stress and the Heart
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Stress and the Heart

• Type A
• Friedman and Rosenmans term for competitive,
  hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and
  anger-prone people
• Type B
• Friedman and Rosenmans term for easygoing,
  relaxed people

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Stress and the Heart
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Stress and Disease

• Psychophysiological Illness
• mind-body illness
• any stress-related physical illness
• some forms of hypertension
• some headaches
• distinct from hypochondriasis-- misinterpreting
  normal physical sensations as symptoms of a
  disease

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Stress and Disease

• Conditioning of immune suppression

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Stress and Disease

• Negative emotions and health-related consequences

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Promoting Health

• Aerobic Exercise
• sustained exercise that increases heart and lung
  fitness

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Promoting Health

• Modifying Type A life-style can reduce recurrence
  of heart attacks

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Promoting Health

• Social support across the life span

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Promoting Health

• Predictors of mortality

1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0
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Promoting Health

• Religious Attendance

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Promoting Health

• The religion factor is mulitidimensional

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Promoting Health

• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• unproven health care treatments not taught widely
  in medical schools, not used in hospitals, and
  not usually reimbursed by insurance companies

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Promoting Health

• Smoking-related early deaths

40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 0
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The Physiological Effects of Nicotine