Stress , Health, and Human Flourishing Stress: Some Basic Concepts Stress Effects and Health

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Stress, Health, and Human FlourishingStress: Some Basic Concepts

Stress Effects and Health

Coping With Stress

Managing Stress Effects

Happiness

Stress: Some Basic Concepts

Stressors—Things that push our buttons

Stress reactions—From alarm to exhaustion


StressProcess of appraising an event as threatening or challenging and responding to

Stressors appraised as threatsCan lead to strong negative reactions

Extreme or prolonged stressCan cause harm

StressProcess by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we appraise as threatening or challenging


Stressors—Things that push our buttonsCatastrophes: Unpleasant, large-scale events

Significant life changes: Personal events

Daily hassles: Day-to-day challenges

Stress Appraisal

The events of our lives flow through a psychological filter. How we appraise an event influences how much stress we experience and how effectively we respond.

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Stress reactions—From alarm to exhaustionCannon

Sympathetic nervous system

Flight-or-fight response

SelyeGeneral adaptation syndrome (GAS)

TaylorTend-and-befriend

Fight-or-flight response Emergency response, including activity of sympathetic nervous system, that mobilizes energy and activity for attacking or escaping a threat

General adaptation syndrome (GAS)Selye’s concept of the body’s adaptive response to stress in three stages—alarm, resistance, exhaustion

Tend-and-befriend responseUnder stress, people (especially women) often provide support to others (tend) and bond with and seek support from others (befriend)

Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome

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Stress response system: When alerted to a negative, uncontrollable event, our ________ nervous system arouses us.

Heart rate and respiration ________ (increase/decrease). Blood is diverted from digestion to the skeletal ________ .

The body releases sugar and fat. All this prepares the body for the ________ response.

Stress Effects and HealthPsychoneuro-

immunology: Studies our mind-body

interactions

Emotions (psycho)

affect your brain (neuro)

which controls the stress hormones that

influence your disease-fighting immune system.

This field is the study of (ology) those

interactions.


Immune system is affected by age, nutrition, genetics, body temperature, and stress.

When the immune system does not function properly:

Responds too strongly

Underreacts

LymphocytesTwo types of white blood cells that are part of the body’s immune system: B lymphocytes release antibodies that fight bacterial infections; T lymphocytes attack cancer cells, viruses, and foreign substances.

Coronary heart diseaseCogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle; the leading cause of death in North America and many other countries.

A Simplified View Of Immune Responses

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Stress Effects and Health: Immune System Malfunctions

Reacting Too Strongly

•Self-attacking diseases•Some forms of arthritis•Allergic reaction

Underreacting

•Bacterial infection flare•Dormant herpes virus erupt•Cancer cells multiply


Stress hormones suppress immune systemAnimal studies: Stress of adjustment in monkeys caused weakened immune systems

Human studies: Stress related to surgical wound healing and development of colds. Low stress may increase effectiveness of vaccinations.

And so…stress does not make people sick but it reduces immune system’s ability to function optimally.

Stress And Colds

People with the highest life-stress scores were also most likely to develop colds when exposed to an experimentally delivered virus (Cohen et al., 1999).

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________ focuses on mind-body interactions, including the effects of psychological, neural, and endocrine functioning on the immune system and overall health.

What general effect does stress have on our overall health?


Stress and AIDS

Stress and cancer

Stress and heart disease


Stress and AIDSStress cannot give people AIDS, but may speed transition from HIV infection to AIDS and the decline in those with AIDS.

Stress and cancerStress does not create cancer cells, but may affect growth by weakening natural defenses.

Stress-cancer research results mixed.

Stress Can Have A Variety Of Health - Related Consequences


Stress and heart disease600, 000 North American coronary heart disease-related deaths yearly

Stress related to generation of inflammation which is associated with heart and other health problems.

Meyer and colleaguesStress predicted heart attack risk for tax accountants.

Type A men more likely to have heart attack.

Conley and colleaguesStress related to everyday academic stressors in students.

10-4 How does stress increase coronary heart disease risk?

Type A Friedman and Rosenman’s term for competitive, hard - driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger - prone people

Type BFriedman and Rosenman’s term for easy going, relaxed people

Type DTerm for people who suppress negative emotion to avoid social disapproval (Grande et al., 2012)

Coping With Stress

Personal control, health, and well-being

Who controls your life?

Is the glass half full or half empty?

Social support

CLOSE-UP: Pets are friends, too

Finding meaning

Coping With Stress

People deal with stress in a variety of ways.

Coping

Problem-focused coping

Emotion-focused coping

EXTREME STRESS

Ben Carpenter experienced the wildest of rides after his wheelchair got stuck in a truck’s grille.

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To cope with stress, we tend to use ________ focused (emotion/problem) strategies when we feel in control of our world.

When we believe we cannot change a situation, we may try to relieve stress with ________-focused (emotion/problem) strategies.

Personal Control, Health, and Well-Being

Success in coping depends on several factors

Personal control

Optimistic outlook

Social support

Finding meaning

Let’s look at each of these.


Personal controlInvolves to degree we perceive having control over our environment

Studying personal controlCorrelation of feelings of control with behaviors and achievements

Experiments involving raising and lowering people’s sense of control and noting the effects


Learned helplessnessInvolves dramatic form of loss of controlMay result in negative health consequences

Fox and colleagues

Roberts and colleagues

Fleming and colleagues

When animals and people experience no control over repeated bad events, they often learn helplessness.

LEARNED HELPLESSNESS


People thrive when they live in conditions of personal freedom and empowerment.

Proposal to improve health and morale by control (Humphrey and others)

Allowing prisoners to have more control over physical space

Having worker participate in decision-making

Offering nursing home patients more choices about their environments


Who controls your life?Those who have an external locus of control believe that chance or outside forces control their fate

They achieve more in school and work, act more independently, enjoy better health, and feel less depressed.

Those who have an internal locus of control believe they control their own destiny:


Half Full of Half Empty?Pessimists

Expect things to go badly, blame others

Optimists/OptimismExpect to have control, work well under stress, and enjoy good health

Run in families; genetic marker/oxytocin

Danner and colleagues: Optimism-long life correlation study


Which of these factors has the strongest association with poor health: smoking 15

cigarettes daily, being obese, being inactive, or lacking strong social connections?


Social support helps fight illness in two ways.

It calms cardiovascular system, which lowers blood pressure and stress hormone levels.

It fights illness by fostering stronger immune functioning.

Can pets help people handle stress?Women experienced lower blood pressure spikes in presence of their dog during challenging test.

Pets increase the odds of survival after a heart attack.

They relieve depression among AIDS patients.

Pets lower the level of fatty acids in the blood that increase the risk of heart disease.

Social Support

Research findingsUchino: People supported by close relationships are less likely to die early.

Kaplan and colleagues: People in low-conflict marriages live longer, healthier lives than unmarried.

Valliant: Healthy aging is better predicted by a good marriage than by a low cholesterol level

Some research finds that people with companionable pets are less likely than those without pets to visit their doctors after stressful events (Siegel, 1990).

How can the health benefits from social support shed light on this finding?


Aerobic exercise

Relaxation and meditation

Faith communities and health


Aerobic exercise, relaxation, meditation, and active spiritual engagement may help us gather inner strength and lessen stress effects.

Based on what we have learned so far, can you guess why?


Aerobic exerciseInvolves sustained activity that increases heart and lung fitness; reduces stress, depression, and anxiety

Can weaken the influence of of genetic risk for obesity

Increases the quality and “quantity” of life (~two years)

Does aerobic exercise produce a change in stress, depression, anxiety, or other health outcomes?

AEROBIC EXERCISE REDUCED DEPRESSION (From McCann & Holmes, 1984.)

• 10 weeks into a experimental exercise program, the women in the aerobic exercise program reported the greatest decrease in depression.

• Aerobic exercise counteracts depression: it increases arousal; it does naturally what some prescription drugs do chemically:

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Relaxation and mediationRelaxation: More than 60 studies found that relaxation procedures can provide relief from headaches, high blood pressure, anxiety, and insomnia

Relaxation training: Training has been used to help Type A heart attack survivors reduce risk of future heart attacks.

Recurrent Heart Attacks And Life-Style Modification

The San Francisco Recurrent Coronary Prevention Project offered counseling from a cardiologist to survivors of heart attacks. Those who were also guided in modifying their Type A lifestyle suffered fewer repeat heart attacks. (From Friedman & Ulmer, 1984.)

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Learning to reflect and acceptMindfulness meditation

Involves attending to current experiences in a nonjudgmental and accepting manner

Improves many health measures


Learning to reflect and acceptHow mindfulness contributes to positive changes

Connections among regions are strengthened.

Brain regions associated with more reflective awareness are activated.

Brain activation in emotional situations are calmed.


Faith communities and health: Faith FactorReligious involvement predicts health and longevity.

What are some of the tactics that help people manage the stress they cannot avoid?

Happiness

The short life of emotional ups and downs

Wealth and well-being

Why can’t money buy more happiness?

CLOSE-UP: Want to be happier?

Happiness

ResilienceInvolves process of bouncing back in the face of adversity or significant sources of stress HUMAN RESILIENCE

Courtesy of Anna Putt

Happiness

Feel-good, do-good phenomenonSuggests that when people feel happy, they become more helpful and doing good promotes feeling good

Subjective well-beingIncludes feelings of happiness and sense of satisfaction with life

USING WEB SCIENCE TO TRACK HAPPYDAYS

The days with the most positive moods are Friday and Saturday (Facebook)

A similar analysis of emotion-related words in 59 million Twitter messages found Friday to Sunday the week’s happiest days.

Adam Kramer (personal correspondence, 2010) tracked positive and negative emotion words in many “ exact number is proprietary information) of status updates of U.S. users of Facebook between September 7, 2007, and November 17, 2010.

THE CHANGING MATERIALISM OF ENTERING COLLEGE STUDENTS

Yearly surveys of more than 200,000 entering U.S. college students have, since 1970, revealed an increasing desire for wealth.(From The American Freshman surveys, UCLA, 1966 to 2012.)

Happiness

The short life of emotional ups and downsOver time, emotional ups and downs tend to balance out.

Positive emotions rise over early to middle part of day and then drop off.

Duration of emotions is overestimated; resilience is underestimated.

Does money buy happiness?

Money surely helps us to avoid certain types of pain. Yet, though buying power has almost tripled since the 1950s, the average American’s reported happiness has remained almost unchanged. (Happiness data from National Opinion Research Center surveys; income data from Historical Statistics of the United States and Economic Indicators.)

Economic growth inwealthy countries has provided no apparent

boost to morale or social well - being.

Why Can’t Money Buy Happiness?

Happiness is relativeRelative to personal experience

Relative deprivation: Sense that people feel that they are worse off than others with whom they compare themselves

Relative to success of othersAs people climb the ladder of success they mostly compare themselves with local peers who are at or above their current level.

Happiness

Predictors of happinessGenes: Heredity accounts for about 50 percent of happiness ratings differences.

Personal history: Emotions balance around level defined by experiences.

Culture: Groups vary in the traits valued.

Is there a happiness set-point?

Happiness Is . . .

Want to be happier? Realize that enduring happiness does not come from financial

success. Take control of your time. Act happy. Seek work and leisure that engage your skills. Join the “movement” movement. Give your body the sleep it wants. Give priority to close relationships. Focus beyond self. Count your blessings and record your gratitude. Nurture your spiritual self.

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Which of the following factors do NOT predict self-reported happiness? Which factors are better predictors?

a. Age d. Gender

b. Personality traits e. Engaging work and

leisure

c. Close relationships f. Active religious faith

Stress , Health, and Human Flourishing Stress: Some Basic Concepts Stress Effects and Health

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