Stress Flashcards
How does stress influence health?
Physiologically
Health habits
Heath services/disease management
What are the 3 ways to define stress and who started them?
1) Physiological Response: Cannon, Selye, Taylor, McEwen
2) Environmental Stimulus: Holmes & Rahe
3) Person-environment Transaction: Lazarus
What is the Response definition of stress?
Response of unpleasant or threatening stimulus (stressor)
Varying stressors = same pattern of response
SAM and HPA axis
What is the fight or flight response?
Walter Cannon
Fight: agressive response, mobilize energy to fight
Flight: withdrawl
Quick response, uses the SAM system
What is the Sam system?
Sympathetic Adrenal Medullary System:
Autonomic, unconcious control
sympathetic: fight or flight
parasympathetic: restore energy (rest / digest)
Adrenal Glands: secrete catecholamines, help w stress responses
Epinephrine and Norepinephrine
Body changes: heart rate, blood pressure, faster breathing, sweating
Who had the idea of homeostasis?
Walter Cannon
Who was Hans Selye ?
General adaptation syndrome
He exposed rats to different stressors and found the same physiological changes
- argued response is not specific to stressor
This helps us invertene and help ppl
What are the phases of General Adaptation Syndrome?
Selye
- Alarm, initial shock, fight or flight. Hpa may kick in
- Resistance: body adapts to stress, continued HPA activation. Continued release of cortisol
- Exhaustion : physical damage and disease, HPA axis disregulated
Describe the HPA axis and cortisol
Hypothalamic, Pituitary, Adrenal axis.
Hypothalamus secretes CRF (corticotropin releasing factor) to pituitary which releases ATCH which goes to adrenal glands which release corticosteroids (cortisol)
Cortisol isn’t just for stress, it helps us mobilize energy. But it dampens inflammitory response, reduces digestion and increases glucose absorption.
Can become disregulated over time due to chronic stress.
Disregulated cortisol pattern can cause development of health conditions: CVD, metabolic issues, mental disorders and even death
Takes a bit longer to kick in
What are criticisms of the Response definition of stress?
Not all responses are the exact same
Ppl differ in reactivity to stress (men and women)
It ignores subjective feelings/appraisals and coping
What is the Tend-and-Befriend hypothesis?
Shelley Taylor
- ppl respond to stress with social affiliation and nurturing behaviors
Role of OXYTOCIN (love hormone/bonding intimacy)
- high levels show social bonding, calmness, relaxation
Under stress, females are likely to ‘tend and befriend’
Promotes suspicion to outgroup members, more protective of children, more wary of others that may pose danger
What is allostatic load?
McEwen
Cumulative wear and tear on the body when exposed to chronic stress.
Develops over a long time, physiological responses add up, over different systems.
Studied via blood tests
Allostatis: deviation from a set point. Increase in heart rate, HPA and SAM responses
What are important features of the physiological stress response?
Exposure: how frequent/intense/long lasting
Reactivity: magnitude of change in reaction to stressors (physiologically) - different with everyone
Recovery: how long it takes to recover to baseline after a stressor is over
Describe the Environmental Stimulus Definition of Stress ! (who did it?)
Holmes and Rahe and the social readjustment rating scale.
Stress= life change (positive or negative)
- ranging from death of a spouse to a parking ticket
What are criticisms of the stimulus/environmental definition of stress?
- points are based on normative ratings (no personal impact of event)
Change isn’t always stressful
No change can be stressful too
Other chronic/daily stressors are ignored
Major life changes are sources of stress, not the stress itself
Many items are confounded with health conditions/illnesses
Retrospective contamination (change in martial arguments, or problem with in laws)
- Third Variable problem
Small relationship between life events and illness (0.12 r)
What personality trait is linked to less health issues?
Consienciousness!
What is the transactional definition of stress?
the Person Environment one by RICHARD LAZARUS
- transactions between person and environment
- APPRAISALS: environmental demands and our ability to cope with them
Takes into account person (control/personality/thoughts) and situation
Ongoing process, we adjust it constantly. Stress is a process.
Interpretation is the important part
According to transactional definition, how is stress defined?
Stress: when the person believes that demands exceed their resources
- interpretation of stressful events is more important than the events themselves
- stress is determined by
1) the person (neuroticism, vulnerability)
2) the stressor (controllability, intensity)
What are the two types of cognitive appraisal?
Primary: assessment of whether there is anything at stake in this encounter
(significance, pos/neg/neutral consequences)
- negative has 3 components
1) harm loss (Damage done)
2) threat (Damage in future)
3) challenge (possible for benefit)
Secondary: assessment of whether one can cope with the demands of the situation.
“ I can/might/can’t handle this”
determines stress
What is reappraisal? Positive reappraisal?
continuous re-assessment based on new information -similar initial process but can lead to more/less stress.
Positive reappraisal: susan folkman worked on lazeras’s ideas with people who had partners with HIV, taking care of dying loved ones having to ‘positively reframe’ their situations
Positive reappraisal is re framing something to see it in a positive light “this is difficult but worthwhile, my efforts are valuable”
What makes events stressful?
More stressful when perceived as
1) uncontrollable or unpredictable
2) ambiguous (vs clear cut)
3) Overload
4) involve central life goals
- doesn’t account for past experiences, might be more susceptible to a certain stressor
What are criticisms of the transactional definition?
Appraisals don’t account for the effects of stressors on health (stress has an effect that aren’t fully explained by your perception , there are objective aspects too!!)
Blames the victim
Too much focus on subjective experience.
What are methods for examining stress?
1) Social Readjustment Rating scale
2) Biomarkers
3) Trier Social Stress Test
4) Perceieved Stress scale (transactional)
5) Daily and chronic stress
What are biomarkers of stress response?
Heart rate Blood pressure Blood/urine/saliva for stress hormones SAM system: EPI and NE from urine HPA: cortisol from saliva or blood
What is the Trier Social Stress test?
Participant has to give a speech and do mental math in front of a panel to reliably stress people out.
pro: reliable
con: limited ecological validity
Developed in germany, how ppl respond to the same stressor
ppl do worse on this if they ruminate a lot
Doesn’t reflect stressors of daily life!!
How do we measure stress in daily life?
Surveys multiple times a day
Saliva Samples
Wearable sensors
Repeated assessments are the best to study fluctuations
How do emotional reactions to stressors predict health and well being?
Reactivity to daily stressors are more important for health than exposure (# of) stressors
- worse health behaviors (sleep/inactivity)
- physiological health risks (inflammation, dystregulated cortisol)
- longer term outcomes (worse financial well being, mental/physical health, mortality risk, net worth)
people who are moer reactive have a greater risk for developing disorders
What is the percieved stress scale?
Sheldon Cohen
- transactional model of stress, about feelings about stress.
less objective/physiological reaction and more subjective
Could predict susceptibility to the common cold
What are norms for the percieved stress scale?
How does stress effect the immune system?
high stress, 16%, low stress 16%, average stress 68%!!
can predict the common cold, immune system
Sheldon Cohen says cytocine is a marker of suceptibility to a cold. Stress manipulates regulation of cytocine. Measured via nasal drops (virus and saline) quarantine and evaluated
What were the outcomes of Sheldon Cohen’s viral infection experiement.
Clinical cold: viral infection and cold symptoms.
Viral infection: increased antibodies or nasal samples
higher stress categories indicated more viral infection and more clinical colds
What are the hypotheses for social support benefiting health?
- Direct Effects - social relationships influence health regardless of stress (sheldon cohen)
- Stress Buffering - social relationships influence health by protecting ppl when they are under stress
What are the 4 types of social support
What makes ppl feel cared for/valued/part of a group
- Tangible (material/services)
- Informational (Advice and information)
- Emotional
- Companionship (being part of a group/team etc.)
