SAH - Physical Reactions to Stress Lesson

 

Physical Reactions to Stress

Do you enjoy speaking in public? Trying a new restaurant? Going on a date? Learning a new subject? While these events might be stressful to one person, they might be exciting to another. Stress is the process of noticing and reacting to a challenging event. An event that might be very challenging to one person might not be so challenging to another, so stress is really about a person's interpretation of the event. Short-term stress can motivate and energize a person; think about the energy you get when you need to study for a test or finish a race. But long-term or intense stress can have adverse health effects.  

The events in life that humans perceive as harmful, threatening, or challenging are known as stressors. Common stressors for adolescents include grades, getting into college, making and maintaining friends, and parents.

Learn more about the three types of stressors below:

Walter Canon studied reactions to stressors in the 1920's and found that humans have measurable physical reactions to stress. When exposed to stress, the sympathetic nervous system increases respiration, slows digestion to provide more energy to skeletal muscles, and releases fat and sugar from the body's reserves to increase available energy for fight or flight.

As science advances, the effects of stress become more clear. A scientist named Hans Selye found that the body reacts to any type of stress in the same way, through a response called the general adaptation syndrome, which has three stages.

Learn more about the three stages of the general adaptation syndrome below:

What can we learn from Selye's research? While stressors can increase energy and help humans achieve, too much extended stress can damage one's health.

 

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