Stress & Health

Stress
1. The response to a demanding situation (a stressor)
2. Psychological stress
  1. Degree to which people have to change their lives in response to an external events
  2. Both good and bad things can cause psychological stress
    1. Getting married, death
3. Physiological stress
  1. Physiological responses in the body caused by physical or psychological stressors
  2. Allostasis
    1. Body's ability to adapt to constantly changing environments to maintain homeostasis
    2. Tight allostatic system
      1. One that moves from high to low levels of arousal flexibly and fluidly
    3. Allostatic load
      1. Chronically elevated state of arousal, damaging the body.
        Result of chronic stressors such as heart disease
      2. Heavy load slows the tight allostatic system
Stress and performance
1. When motivated to perform well, body response can improve or inhibit performance
2. Fight or flight
  1. Challenge or threat
    1. Challenge = when you think personal resources > situational demands
    2. Threat = when you think personal resources < situational demands
3. Extreme stress and memory
  1. In response to stressors, body releases cortisol
  2. Cortisol - reduces working memory span, decreases hippocampal mass and blood flow
Stress and health
1. Immunity
  1. Psychological stress decrease immune functioning
2. Cohen's hotel study
  1. Less stress = more immune to the cold
3. Stress = response to a change in environment that results in a change to maintain homeostasis
Perceived control
1. Belief that we can influence our environment to get positive or negative outcomes
2. Self efficacy
  1. Belief that you can complete the action needed to deal with a situation
3. Learned helplessness
  1. Sense that one can no longer control their environment
    1. Gives up
      1. Negative events = stable, internal
  2. Stable attribution
    1. Caused by factors that don't change
  3. Internal attribution
    1. Caused by you
  4. Global attribution
    1. Causes of one negative event applies to other events
Physiological thriving
1. Positive stress - acute stressors instead of chronic
  1. Complete relaxation between stressors
  2. Leads to a healthier immune system
2. Physiological toughening
  1. Animals exposed to intermittent stressors showed toughening
  2. Animals exposed to chronic stressors showed allostatic load
  3. Strong mobilization of stress responses coupled with rapid recovery
  4. Psychological thriving
    1. Responding positively to past stressors leads to perception of benefit
    2. Viewing stressors as a challenge improves responses
Reducing stress
1. Exercise
  1. Improves mood and reduces stress
    1. 3x/week, 20 mins of moderate intensity
2. Meditation
Left prefrontal cortex asymmetry
1. More positive emotion and high immune functioning
  1. Monks' have more asymmetry

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	Created by andreaarose over 10 years ago