Stress , Health, and Human Flourishing Stress: Some Basic Concepts Stress Effects and Health
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Transcript of 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
Stress: Some Basic Concepts
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
Stress: Some Basic Concepts
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: Some Basic Concepts
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.
Stress Effects and Health
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 Effects and Health
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 Effects and Health
Stress and AIDS
Stress and cancer
Stress and heart disease
Stress Effects and Health
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 Effects and Health
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 Control, Health, and Well-Being
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
Personal Control, Health, and Well-Being
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
Personal Control, Health, and Well-Being
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
Personal Control, Health, and Well-Being
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:
Personal Control, Health, and Well-Being
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
Personal Control, Health, and Well-Being
Which of these factors has the strongest association with poor health: smoking 15
cigarettes daily, being obese, being inactive, or lacking strong social connections?
Personal Control, Health, and Well-Being
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?
Managing Stress Effects
Aerobic exercise
Relaxation and meditation
Faith communities and health
Managing Stress Effects
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?
Managing Stress Effects
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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Managing Stress Effects
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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Managing Stress Effects
Learning to reflect and acceptMindfulness meditation
Involves attending to current experiences in a nonjudgmental and accepting manner
Improves many health measures
Managing Stress Effects
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.
Managing Stress Effects
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