Affects of Stress
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There is no way to avoid stress and it takes a toll on the body. The amount of damage it does varies from person to person, depending on how well they handle stressful situations, but often people donĘt realize their body is reacting to stress because it does not always cause overt symptoms immediately. Stress comes from many sources - work, natural disasters, illness, noise, divorce (Nathan, 2002). Stress can also come indirectly from reading or hearing about tragic events in the news. The American Psychological Association states that 75 percent to 90 percent of doctorĘs visits are for stress-related problems (Curry, 2002). The six leading causes of death - heart disease, cancer, lung diseases, cirrhosis of the liver, accidents and suicides - are all linked to stress. Stress, as well as causing psychological problems, causes physical problems in the body: headaches, high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, eating and sleeping disorders, gastric upsets, temporomandibular joint disorder, and atherosclerosis (Berkow, Beers and Fletcher, 1997; Curry, 2000; Nordstrom, 2001). Stress affects the body through a series of actions initiated in the brain (Nathan, 2002). The reaction begins in the hypothalamus, which sends signals via the nervous system to the medullary region of the adrenal glands, resulting in the secretion by these glands of the hormone epinephrine (adrenalin). Epinephrine increases the heart and respiratory rates, elevates the blood pressure, and r
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ke other such studies, which have usually been conducted in low-income neighborhoods, this study included a high-income neighborhood where one third of the subjects had at least a four-year college degree and 10 percent had higher degrees.
A study in Germany looked at the impact of a new airport in Munich on stress, quality of life, and cardiovascular reactivity in children between the ages of 9 and 11 years (Evans, Bullinger and Staffan, 1998). They found that over a two-year period, blood pressure was significantly higher (both systolic and diastolic), and the levels of the stress hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol were also higher.
Caring for the elderly is a stressful situation, and is often a problem for relatives who care for a spouse at home (Schulz and Beach, 1999). A study was carried out with 392 elderly caregivers and 427 noncaregivers as controls. They were followed for an average of 4.5 years. Physical health was measured for the presence of prevalent clinical and subclinical disease indicators strongly associated with mortality in the elderly. The caregivers fell into three categories: those with prevalent disease, with at least one of six prevalent disease indicators present; those with subc
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2041
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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