Different Perspectives on Stress and Illness
The association between stress and the immune system
The link between the illness and stress is very complicated. The vulnerability of the stress is different from one individual to another (Carabotti, Scirocco, Maselli & Severi, 2015). The aspects that determine this vulnerability are the genetic susceptibility, individuality, social assistance and coping with the lifestyle. Stress can be described as a way in which organism strains due to the demands of the environment that are caused by the psychological need and also biological change whose outcome could be illness risks (Cho & Norman, 2013).
Stressors are the things that cause the stress for many individuals. Stress can affect every person old or young. It has nowadays become a fact in life that we must deal with. Pressure can come in all dimensions including our thoughts which can cause us the trouble and make individuals body vulnerable to sickness. There are various perspectives and theories concerning the stress and illness (Collins, Surette & Bercik, 2012). For instance, the psychological, environmental and the natural emotions. The ecological stress focuses on the experiences and the conditions objectively linked to the adaptability needs. The second perspective is the psychological stress that examines individual’s ability in coping with the demands availed by the experiences and various conditions. Lastly, the biological theory focuses on the roles of specific physiological demanding situations (de Heredia, Gómez-Martínez & Marcos, 2012)
Therefore, the main objective of this review paper is to focus on the stress and how it interferes with the immune system of the human beings. The paper will as well focus on the stress and physiology. As mentioned earlier, the link between the illness and the pressure can be very complicated. A condition that results in sickness in one individual can never be the same cause for the disease in the other individual (Dhabhar, 2014). The condition must come into contact with a wide range of aspects to manifest the sickness. These are the aspects that can impact such vulnerability to the stress and withstand the current lifestyle. The support from the society and the kind of the personality when the issues are presented to us, we first examine the extent of the issue and then consider whether the process is appropriate and the availability of the resources in order to withstand the problem (Fagundes, Glaser & Kiecolt-Glaser, 2013).
According to (Hall, Podawiltz, Mummert, Jones & Mummert, 2012) one of the stress researchers termed the positive stress as the eustress. The pressure can be confident when it makes us adapt to the environment and equip us with more strength to our susceptibility mechanism, and the lifestyle transformation is guaranteed in case we maintain the optimal wellbeing (Hill et al., 2014). Such actions enable various professional like the athlete with the competitive edges and the optimal projection enthusiasm for the public speakers. Stress can be termed as negative when it’s beyond our capability in coping, fatigues the system of our bodies and results in physical and the behavioral problems. Such kind of the stress can be termed as the distress (Hodes et al., 2014) The distress results in overreaction, inappropriate concentration, anxiety to the performances and confusions. Hence this has led to a big concern about the increasing prevalence and the cost of distress related disorders.
Prevalence of Stress Disorders in the Workplace
These disorders are mostly linked to the workplace where individuals have been reported to have worked up to death. This is mainly for those companies known to work for an extended number of hours like China, and Japan. The approximated prevalence of the stress disorders in the United Kingdom increased from about 829 in every group of 100000 employees to round 1700 in every 100000 employees between the year 1990-2002. In the same year, it was estimated that about 13.4 million works were lost due to the stress and the depression cases. The recent research that was carried out by (Sommer & Bäckhed, 2013) indicated that most of the individuals’ sickness was attributed to stress. It has also been suggested that about 80-90% of the injuries that happen within the working place were associated with the pressure. This has been contributed by the highest number of the employees who are unable to cope with stress situations. A health organization in the European countries approximated about 50 percent of the work absenteeism was also facilitated by the stress (Shonkoff et al., 2012)
Therefore, the mortality and the morbidity related to stress and the illness is a significant global issue. The pressure due to emotions contributes to a big range of factors that can lead to the most of the deaths cases recorded in the United States. For instance, heart diseases, cancer, suicides and the respiratory diseases with the regards to the research conducted by the meridian stress management consultancy located within the United Kingdom, about 180000 individuals die every year due to stress associated disorders. The organization for the diseases control in the U.S approximated the stress contributes a 75 percent of the medical visit. This was attributed to a big range of physical problems overwhelmed by the heart issues, the headache, stomach ulcers, fatigue and the pains at the back. Therefore, this review will first look into the stress physiology in order understand how the stress issue emerge before embarking on the link between the stress and the immune system (Rizzo, Barbieri, Marfella & Paolisso, 2012).
Stress can be revealed to physiology by defining it as a process through which the extrinsic or the intrinsic stressors threaten the homeostasis. All the critical physiologic process within the body are programmed by the fine-turning rigorously that reach the evolution to maintain an advanced and stabilized the state which is eustasis and the homeostasis. These two states, the homeostasis and the eustasis are critical in life and the health state of the human beings. Such optimal balances are continually affected by the forces like the extrinsic and the intrinsic also termed as the stressor hence giving another definition of the stress as the condition of the disharmony (Osborn & Olefsky, 2012).
The response for the stress is transmitted by the intricate and the intertwined cellular and the molecular framework that is constituted by the system of stress located at the CNS (the central nervous system) and within the periphery. The adaptability responses of each person when presented to the stress situation is usually determined by the multiplicity of the genetics, the developmental and the environmental aspects. The changes that take place to respond to the stressors effectively can result in sickness. Furthermore, the highly chronic stressors might have a detrimental impact on various physiological individual development and their behaviors. These physiologic competence developments in an individual include the reproduction, growth immunocompetence and the metabolism. Point of note, the infancy, childhood, adolescence and the prenatal are very vital during the processes when the adaptive response to stress matrix is formed. The process is attributed to the high-quality system of the stress and raises the susceptibility to the stressors (Marques, O’Connor, Roth, Susser & Bjørke-Monsen, 2013).
Mortality and Morbidity Associated with Stress and Illness
The system of the stress integrates and receives a wide range of the neurosensory like the auditory, visual, visceral, somatosensory and the receptive, the limbic and the blood within the bones signals that arrive in the different centers of the stress. The transmission of these signals is accomplished through the different pathways. The system of the acute stress activation intricates a number of the time limited transformations. That is the physical and behavioral which seem to be consistent in the way they are presented qualitatively, and all these are commonly known as the stress syndrome. These changes introduced during such transformations are always adaptive and improves the survival chances. Initially, the activation of the systems of the stress aspects is followed by the specific stressor mode. Although the increase of the stressor potency, the adaptive response specificity reduces so as to finally present the non-specific syndrome of the stress phenomenology but finally exposes the potent stressor. The adaptive behavioral are the improved arousal, vigilance, the alertness, cognition, analgesia and the concentration at the same time, there is inhibition of the functions like the reproduction and the feeding. The physical adaptation act through and redirects the resources of the body and the energy (Leonard & Maes, 2012).
Thus, increasing the tone of the cardiovascular, the rate of respiration and the metabolism intermediate which redirects essential substrates while the functions like the digestion, the reproduction, and the body immunity are stressed temporarily. Hence the nutrients and the oxygen are mainly shunted to the central nervous system and within the stressed sites in an individual’s body. Moreover, the forces are retained at the adaptive of the responses to stress are as well activated at the time of the stress processes to counter the presence of the excess reaction of the different systems of the stress components. The capability of the precisely and timely retaining of the forces development is also very vital for a good outcome contrary to the imposed stressors. The prolonged coordinated responses of the adaptive emotions could lead to maladaptive and facilitate the development of the illness (Jones, & Thomsen, 2013).
The system of the immune of a person is one of the most critical areas that are vulnerable to stress. Much of what we have seen earlier was all about the link between the central nervous system and the responses to the immune which can also be traced in psychoneuroimmunology or the PNI developed in the year 1964. This was all about the research conducted and concerned on the conscious interaction, the CNS (central nervous system) and the brain which together acts to defend the body of an individual against the external environmental infections. The immune response is regulated by the cytokines, hormones, the antigens, and the antibodies. The lymphocytes are the essential part of the orchestrating roles of the immune system. They stimulate the cellular which releases specific components that are involved in the response inflammatory. The T-cells typically produce them though they can also be provided by other cells within the body. The helper T-cell 1 and the T-cell 2 cytokines restrain each other’s function and the production. The helper T-cell 1 induce the cellular resistance and suppresses the humoral resistance while the helper T-cell 2 cytokine produces the opposite effects (Goto & Kiyono, 2012).
Stress Physiology
The cytokines respond to the immune stimuli. These cytokines frequently act over the short distance and time span as well as the lower concentration. They do so through binding to specific receptors within the membrane that signals the tyrosine kinases to interfere with the behavior. The responses to the cytokines that overwhelm decreasing and increasing in expressing proteins’ layer, secretion and the proliferation of the effector components. A significant number of the cytokines induces the immune cell differentiation common antigens associated with the bacteria that initiates the stimulation and compliment the macrophages to express the co-stimulatory components (Tung et al., 2012).
These antigens then induce the adaptive responses of the immune system through the activation of the lymphocytes that causes the antibodies to produce the cytokines and compliment. Thus, increasing the elimination of antigen and then recruits more leukocytes. Different medical researchers have conducted medical researchers indicated that the long-term or the chronic associated stress causes the immunosuppressive impact that withholds the capability to induce some quick common responses. The immunosuppressive has been facilitated by a wide range of the corticosteroids that are produced when an individual is affected by the long-term stress. This is due to the impact caused by the chronic stress that results in the imbalance in the corticosteroids level thus weakening the immunocompetence. The weakening of the roles played by the immune system is believed to strain different parts of the body linked to the production and maintenance of the immunity within the organization. For instance, the thymus shrinking causes it inability in producing the T cells or the different hormones that need to induce them. Therefore, this may lead to inefficiency and the imbalance of the whole immune system. This has proven that as every individual get old, we are exposed to the analysis of the different studies that have shown that stress caused the alteration of the immunity. However, the pressure that does not prolong for an extended period boost the level of the immune system. This is because the stress is able to overcome and meet the difficulties associated with the adaptive responses that prepare for the infection and the injuries. Chronic or the pressure that prolongs for an extended period of results to tear and the wear causing the breakdown of the systems especially if an individual is unable to contain the events.
Other medical researchers have revealed that the long-term or the chronic stress alters individual’s social functions and the identity. These are out of their control and linked to the global immunity expression. The duration of the pressure plays a critical role as well. That means the more extended the period of stress the higher the chances of a detrimental change at the first stage of the cellular resistance and the immune role as well. That means the more extended the period of the stress the higher the chances of shifting the immune system from the potential adaptive change to a detrimental change at the first stage of the cellular resistance and the free role. They have as well shown that operations at the immune of individuals who are old or living unhealthy life are more exposed to stress associated changes (Hooper, Littman & Macpherson, 2012).
Impact of Chronic Stressors on Physiology
For instance, diseases like ulcers within the stomach of many individuals are as a result of the acid produced within the stomach walls. The doctors that deal with such patients have recorded that the ulcers are the result of stress associated events like the hostility and the anger while the withdrawal and the depression decreased it. The other theory associated with the stomach ulcers is the mucous lining the stomach walls. This perspective suggests that the long-term stress causes the secretion of the noradrenaline whose outcome is the constriction of the capillaries within the walls of the stomach. Thus, resulting in the shutdown of the production of mucus that protects the walls of the stomach. Without this protective barrier, the HCL (Hydrochloric Acid) can penetrate into the bloodstreams by breaking down the tissues which can cause the bleeding ulcers. Though it has been recently discovered many cases associated with stomach ulcers are as the result of Helicobacter pylori bacteria initiates the production of the acid (Rook, 2013).
Conclusion
The cases of the stress problems are very serious, and many believe we have no resources to walk through it, then it’s a perception that we are living under stress. That the only way we can react on the different situations that create its vulnerability to the wellbeing and the overall to our sickness. Not every strain has a harmful effect if the body can tolerate and the use of the same stress in overcoming lethargy or facilitate the performance in an individual
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