Stress and Cancer

Stress is something we hear mentioned every day in our world. I have somewhat of an idea that stress is not good for our health. For many of us, it's all that we know. Let's take a deeper and more thorough look at how stress both benefits us and how it can degrade our health.

The term stress, court was applied to human beings, was the term that was used in physics to describe the effect of a force applied to an object. We might take a piece of metal and put different degrees of force into that metal and specific ways to see how that metal responded. This was called, stressing the metal. This was a very straightforward concept and very useful to see how various things in our world responded to the forces that could be applied to them.

In the earlier part of the 20th century, the concept of stress start to be applied in the context of biology and then psychology. In the 1930s, Hans Selye, and endocrinologist, is credited with introducing the modern concept of stress. He conducted extensive research on how various inputs into biological systems affected those organisms. He found that organisms general response to stress took place in three stages. Those stages were first alarm, then resistance, and then exhaustion. In this groundbreaking research on the effects of chronic stress on the human body, Selye opened up a whole new area of understanding. This eventually led to what he called General Adaptation Syndrome.

Selye's initial studies involved exposing animals in the laboratory to various stressors, such as extremes in heat, physical trauma, and infections. What he observed was that regardless of the type of stressor, the animals displayed very similar patterns of physiological response. As we said earlier, general Adaptation Syndrome consists of three very distinct stages: First there is the alarm stage, the body reacts to the stressor with increased arousal and activation of the sympathetic nervous system. This triggers the release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol.

If he would continue to apply these stressors, he found that organisms entered into the resistance stage it attempts to adapt and cope with the ongoing stress. Hormonal responses continue and the body tries to restore the former homeostasis while using its resources to fight or overcome the stressor. However, if the stressor persists for an extended. Time or the body's resources are depleted, then the organism enters into the exhaustion stage. In this stage the body's ability to adapt and resist the stress diminishes. Chronic stress can lead to various health problems, including physical and mental fatigue, decreased immune function, increased risk of illness. This research became the basis of much of what has followed since then in our understanding of stress and its impact on our bodies.

In the mid 20th century researcher by the name of Walter Cannon extended our understanding of stress by introducing the concept of fight or flight response. He described in detail how the body activates adaptive physiological responses in the face of perceived threat or stressors. He also identified the sympathetic nervous system as the key player in mobilizing the body's resources during stress. He noted the release of stress hormones, is adrenaline and noradrenaline, triggers to physiological change to enhance the physical and or mental readiness for action. Today, we are all familiar with the idea of fight or flight and maybe even freeze, which is a response we often see an animals in people where they become immobilized in response to danger and/or stress.

In the 1960s, Richard Lazarus introduced the transactional model of stress emphasizing the subjective response to stressors. Lazarus propose that stress results from an individual's assessment of how important the stressor is to them and their perceived ability to cope with it effectively. This model shifted the focus from objective properties of stressors to the individual's cognitive appraisal and emotional response. It highlighted the importance of phycological factors and subjective experiences in stress response.

The late 20th century research led to the perspective that we now call psychoneuroimmunology, which shed light on this very complex interplay between psychological systems, the nervous system, and hormonal responses that take place during stress. The concept of allostatic load was introduced by Bruce McEwen, referring to the wear and tear on the body due to chronic stress. Allostatic low describes how prolonged or repeated activation of stress can have detrimental effects on physiological systems contributing to various health problems. We'll go into this much more later.

The next perspective to arrive on the impact of stress was the biopsychosocial model of stress. Building on the earlier models, this model recognizes that stress is a complex phenomena influenced by biological psychological and social factors. This model highlights the interactions between genetic, physiological,,, social dimensions of stress. It emphasizes the importance of considering multiple levels of analysis to understand the impact of stress on health and well-being.

Contemporary research in regards to stress and its impact on our health continue to develop and our understanding continues to deepen and has extended to include mental health, vascular Health, immune function, all well-being studies have explored extensively the role of stress in the development and progression of various diseases, including sure and mechanism through which stress can influence physiological processes and disease outcomes. It is important to note that chronic or prolonged activation of the stress response can lead to persistent elevation and stress hormones, conditions like hypertension, system dysregulation, disorders and mental health disorders. Are am here is to help you understand what the prayer stressors in life may have contributed to your current situation and if you have been diagnosed with cancer or another illness, part that that stress may play in your ongoing movement towards restoring your ideal health.