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The Stress Reaction

By Zinn Jeremiah

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 19Nov2007
Word count: 428
Viewed: 373 time(s)

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Stress is a part of every human's life, and has been quite frankly since humans first came to be. Stress serves important functions in certain situations, but chronic stress or excessive stress can be quite damaging. The problem is that in modern life, it's not at all difficult to fall into patterns of being frequently stressed. Many of us feel overburdened and underappreciated, and this perspective alone is enough to cause a stress reaction.

A frequent cause of a stress reaction is anxiety. Anxiety in a general sense is a worry or apprehension about some event, often something in the future. Anxiety isn't the only cause of stress, to be sure: stress can result from anger, sadness, loss, and various other emotional outlooks. There's also the stress that comes from eager anticipation, sometimes referred to as good stress.

When a person experiences stress, the body typically releases cortisol into the bloodstream. Cortisol is a hormone that causes physical changes in the body's response. Specifically, cortisol increases blood pressure and blood sugar. Cortisol is so frequent in the human body's stress reaction that it's often referred to as the stress hormone. From a biological standpoint, cortisol's function is to prepare the body to physically respond to an imminent danger. The increasing of blood pressure and blood sugar provides the body an energy solution that can be used in defense or to flee. Cortisol's origins likely go back to the times when our human ancestors faced regular predatory threats.

What makes cortisol an asset to the human body equally makes it a detriment. Increases in blood pressure and blood sugar, when they should occur frequently, cause degenerative wear on vital body organs. Increased blood pressure puts strain on the heart, the kidneys, the arteries, brain, and other significant areas of the body as well. High levels of sugar in the blood can literally destroy bodily tissue. From a health standpoint then, we want cortisol to kick in when we absolutely need it, but not otherwise: the effects are potentially too damaging to the body, especially where they occur consistently over time.

Mainstream medicine has come to appreciate the detrimental effects of stress, and entire medical programs are now dedicated to reducing the stress reaction. The reality is that most modern human beings very rarely if ever face predatory threat, but the stress reaction remains in place just the same. Turning this stress reaction off in all but the rarest of cases would be a big boost to any person's health.

Zinn Jeremiah is a freelance author. For help with stress anxiety, visit anxiety help or anxiety treatment.

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