What is Stress?

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Final Action Plan Author Affiliation Stress is a body's method of reacting to a challenge. According to the stressful event, the body's way to respond to stress is by sympathetic nervous system activation which results in the fight-or-flight response. In humans, stress typically describes a negative condition or a positive condition that can have an impact on a person's mental and physical well-being. Physiological or biological stress is an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition or a stimulus. The term "stress" had not been used before the 1920s. It is a form of the Middle English destresse, derived via Old French from the Latin stringere, "to draw tight." The word had long been in use in physics to refer to the internal distribution of a force exerted on a material body, resulting in strain. In the 1920s and 1930s, biological and psychological circles occasionally used the term to refer to a mental strain or to a harmful environmental agent that could cause illness. Walter Cannon used it in 1926 to refer to external factors that disrupted what he called homeostasis. Stress is an explanation of lived experiences that is absent from both lay and expert life narratives before the 1930s. Physiological stress represents a wide range of physical responses that occur as a direct effect of a stressor causing an upset in the homeostasis of the body. Upon immediate disruption of either psychological or physical equilibrium the body responds by stimulating the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems. The reaction of these systems causes a number of physical changes that have both short and long term effects on the body. After taking the Holms and Rahe self-assessment my results were 277 which meant t... ... middle of paper ... ...erals. I am likely to do this as my wife has already paid the gym membership. Since my wife will be going to the gym as well I am very confident this can be a goal that will be achieved. In doing so I expect to be happier, feel better, look better and minimize my stress level to the point to where it will not be as damaging as it is now. References Khansari, D. N., A. J. Murgo, et al. (1990). "Effects of Stress on the Immune System." Immunology Today 44:26 170-175 Dantzer, R. and K. W. Kelley (1989). "Stress and Immunity: An Integrated View of Relationships Between the Brain and the Immune System." Life Sciences. 44(26): 1995-2008. Jones MD, Daniel W (2012) 24:923-947. Racial and Ethnic Differences in Advance Care Hall PhD, John E (2012). Planning: Identifying Subgroup Patterns and Obstacles. Racial and Ethnic Differences in Blood Pressure.

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