stress and health

• Health psychology


  field investigates behaviour, cognition, and physical health to understand what makes people sick or healthy
• Biosocial model of health


  what makes us healthy through biology, psychology, and social context that are closely interconnected to what forms health
• benefits of applying biopsychosocial model to understanding health


  contributing factors can actively target healthy outcomes and understand health analysis
• example: dawn exposed to social media believes that her friends live more better lives than she does, what biopsychosocial model is she worried about?

  the psychological component -- even though its related to social context, due to the worry
• stress


  physiological response to some type of environmental event that is subjectively appraised as taxing
• when does stress occur

  when environmental demands exceed ability to adapt and also has physiological component that can lead to health complications
• most and least stressful careers

  jobs that involve physical risk, great responsibility or time pressure are the most stressful
• what stresses us out

  catastrophic events, major life events, and daily hassles
• catastrophic events


  the most extreme type of stressor, they threaten lives and are often accompanied by devastating losses
• major life events


  disrupt the social safety nets that support our everyday experiences
• daily hassles


  everyday irritations that cause small disruptions, the effects of which can add up to a large impact on health
• perceived stress


  people's subjective evaluations of stress in response to events, depending on how they appraise a stressful event
• stress appraisal theory


  our appraisals of an event and our role in it help us shape our emotional experience to it
• primary appraisal


  perception of the demands of a given situation
• secondary appraisal


  our evaluation of whether we feel equipped to deal with those demands
• what role does cognition have on stress

  amplifies, mitigates, and triggers stress responses by just thinking of the stressful situation
• general adaptation syndrome


  when exposed to physical threat, the body send out an "all hands on deck" response that unfolds in 3 stages
• what did Selye say about the general adaptation syndrome


  only when the body's stress responses persist past the resistance to exhaustion do people suffer from long term effects on health
• 3 stages of general adaptation syndrome


  alarm reaction stage, resistance stage and exhaustion stage
• alarm stage


  emergency reaction, heart beat increase, and brain release cortisol and epinephrine (body prepares for stressor)
• resistance stage


  body maximizes defences to fight prolonged stressors , immunity increases
• exhaustion stage


  immune system weakens, initiates irritation and becomes susceptible to illness
• what led Hans Selye to realize that stress was responsible for the symptoms his rats were displaying


  the rats in the control condition showed the same symptoms as those that received the ovarian extract injections
• What did Selye's research discover

  established a link between stress and health governed by 2 bodily responses to a stressful situation
• sympathetic-adreno-medullary (SAM) axis -- superhero


  physiological response system that governs immediate response to stressful events (fight or flight)
• hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis -- sidekick


  body system governs prolonged response to stressful events -- enables conservation of energy
• what activates SAM and HPA? what does it secrete?


  the hypothalamus activates the stress responses enabling it to secrete CRH and activates the pituitary gland to secrete ACTH
• challenge reactivity


  sympathetic arousal leads your heart to beat faster and start pumping blood with greater force and in greater volume
• cardiovascular reactivity


  appraisals of stressful situations alter the precise profile of cardiovascular response and performance
• threat reactivity


  increase in heart rate combined with vasoconstriction
• example of threat reactivity

  you receive a text that you are late for work, so you rush to get ready and develop a migraine
• cortisol


  is released into the bloodstream in stage 2 of HPA and is a stress hormone due to elevated negative and evaluative social situations
• why is stress bad for health

  prolonged physiological response to stressors are harmful
• what does the body do in response to a short term acute stressor


  body's physiological reactions are very adaptive
• can stress make us stronger?


  students that experience moderate level of lifetime adversity find it easier to withstand mild physical pain
• sustained allostatic load


  ongoing stress responses that our body sustains under chronic, continuous stressors ("wear/tear the body)
• how does stress lead to heart disease

  chronic activation of SNS can lead to buildup of plaques on arterial walls (risk of heart attack)
• how would BETA blockers prevent the risk of heart attack

  they reduce the intensity of SNS reactions to stressful events
• chronic stress on health

  it weakens the immune system, leaving people susceptible to illness
• cytokines


  molecules that are released as a first responder system to fight infection