SOS 3200 Module 2 Stress Response Paper: From Selye's Alarm Reaction to Allostatic Load and Immunity Example

Wear and Tear: What My Headaches, Sleep and Colds Say About the Stress Response

Student Name

B.S. in Health Studies, Thomas Edison State University

SOS-3200: The Management of Stress and Tension

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Wear and Tear: What My Headaches, Sleep and Colds Say About the Stress Response

Introduction

In my first paper I found that I appraise many daily demands as threats. This paper asks what that does to my body. This past winter, tension headaches arrived on three or four afternoons most weeks, I wake at 3 a.m. and cannot fall back asleep, and I caught three colds. I wanted to understand whether these are connected to stress and how.

Selye's Discovery

Selye (1936) reported that rats exposed to very different harmful agents, including cold, surgical injury, excessive exercise and sublethal doses of drugs, developed the same set of changes. Within hours, their thymus, spleen and lymph nodes shrank, and erosions appeared in their stomachs. Selye called this the alarm reaction. If the harm continued, the animals adapted for a time, and with prolonged exposure they lost that resistance. He later developed these stages into the general adaptation syndrome: alarm, resistance and exhaustion. His key insight was that the body has a general response to demands of many kinds, in addition to responses specific to each one.

Two Systems

The stress response works through two main pathways. Within seconds, sympathetic nerves and the adrenal medulla release epinephrine and norepinephrine that raise heart rate, blood pressure and blood glucose and sharpen alertness. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis acts over minutes: the hypothalamus releases corticotropin-releasing hormone, the pituitary releases adrenocorticotropic hormone and the adrenal glands release cortisol. Cortisol mobilizes energy, adjusts immune activity and, through feedback to the brain, normally switches the response off when the threat passes.

Allostasis and Allostatic Load

McEwen (1998) argued that these mediators are protective in the short term. He used the term allostasis for staying stable by changing, as the body adjusts heart rate, hormones and immune activity to meet demands. Problems arise when the system is overused or poorly regulated, creating allostatic load, which can arise in four ways: frequent stress that triggers the response again and again, no adaptation even when the same stressor keeps returning, a response that stays on after the stressor is gone, and a response too weak to keep other systems in check. Over time, allostatic load adds to the risk of hypertension, hardened arteries, fat around the abdomen, memory problems and lowered immune defense. McEwen noted that sleep loss, poor diet and lack of exercise add to the load.

Stress and Immunity

Segerstrom and Miller (2004) analyzed more than 300 studies of stress and immune function. Brief, acute stressors, lasting minutes, increased some parts of natural immunity, the fast first-line defense, which may prepare the body for injury. Brief naturalistic stressors, such as exams, shifted the balance of immune signaling. Long-lasting stressors, such as years of caregiving or unemployment, went with weaker immunity on both the cellular and the antibody side. The more a stressor changed a person's life and the longer it lasted, the broader the immune effects.

This pattern fits my winter. My stressors are chronic rather than brief, and caregivers of people with long-term illness were among the groups in which suppressed immunity was most consistently found. My three colds may reflect this, along with exposure from my children and coworkers.

My Symptoms Explained

My tension headaches likely reflect sustained muscle tension in my neck and shoulders, part of the readiness the sympathetic system creates, which I hold for hours at my desk. Waking at 3 a.m. fits McEwen's failure to shut off: cortisol normally rises toward morning, and a mind rehearsing problems can push arousal high enough to wake me. Short sleep then adds to allostatic load.

A Week in Two Speeds

Looking at my log from module one through this lens, I can see two speeds of stress. The fast kind lasts minutes: a phone call from my father's pharmacy, a heated exchange with my son. My heart races and my hands feel cold, then it passes. Segerstrom and Miller suggest such brief jolts may even prime the body's first-line defenses. The slow kind runs underneath for weeks: worry about my father's decline, a work system that never quite works and the sense of always being behind in class. This second kind is the one McEwen's model warns about, because the response never fully switches off. Reducing the slow kind, or giving the body regular chances to recover from it, matters more for my health than avoiding every jolt.

Signs I Had Missed

Reading about the stress response also made me notice signs I had dismissed. I clench my jaw in meetings, my shoulders rise toward my ears while I type and I eat quickly without tasting my food. These are small signals of a body held in readiness, and I can use them as cues to pause and breathe.

Changes Aimed at the Response

Understanding the response suggests changes. To interrupt repeated hits, I can reduce demands, as I planned in module one. To support shutting off, I can set a cutoff for work email at 8 p.m. and write tomorrow's list before bed so I do not rehearse it at night. To reduce muscle tension, I can stand and stretch every hour at work. Exercise and sleep, which I will study in module five, may lower load directly.

Limits

Selye's work was in rats, and the stages of his syndrome are simplified. The immune studies show associations, and my colds have many possible causes. I cannot measure my own cortisol or immune function, so my application is an interpretation.

Conclusion

Selye showed that the body answers many kinds of demand with a common response. McEwen explained how that response protects in the short term but wears the body down when overused, and Segerstrom and Miller showed how chronic stress weakens immunity. My headaches, broken sleep and colds fit this picture, and they point to changes that help the response switch off.

References

McEwen, B. S. (1998). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), 171-179. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199801153380307

Segerstrom, S. C., & Miller, G. E. (2004). Psychological stress and the human immune system: A meta-analytic study of 30 years of inquiry. Psychological Bulletin, 130(4), 601-630. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.130.4.601

Selye, H. (1936). A syndrome produced by diverse nocuous agents. Nature, 138(3479), 32. https://doi.org/10.1038/138032a0