General Adaptation Syndrome

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Recommended: Causes and consequences of stress

What is stress? Stress is something that every human being feels on a daily basis. According to Rosch (2017), Han Selye created the term stress in 1936 and defined stress as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change”. Stress can be good or bad. Myers & DeWall (2017), called good stress or positive stress Eustress and bad stress or negative stress is called distress. How does stress affect a person? Utilizing the Psychology in Everyday Life textbook and the video Stress: Portrait of a Killer; I will discuss general adaptation syndrome and stress effects on health.
Han Selye developed the general adaptation syndrome. It has three stages called alarm reaction, stage of resistance, and stage of exhaustion. The general adaptation syndrome prepares the body for danger so that we can …show more content…

According to Heminway, Sapolsky, Lovett, Williams & Biando (2008), baboon’s hierarchy system determined the stress levels experienced by each individual baboon. The top level baboons experienced less stress than lower ranked baboons. The lower ranked baboons were bullied by higher ranked baboons which increased their stress. In addition, his research showed that animals turn off stress faster than humans, stress causes the brain to shrink, and damages DNA by unraveling chromosomes (Heminway et al., 2008).
Furthermore, the Whitehall study examined the hierarchy of British civil servants and the relationship between work, health and stress. The findings were similar to the findings of the baboon study. According to the Whitehall study (Heminway et al., 2008), lower position civil servants experienced back pain, cancer, chronic lung disease, depression, heart disease, gastrointestinal disease, sickness absence, suicide and general sense of ill-health compared to higher position civil servants. This study proved that your work position is related to your health and

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