1. Stress, Health, and Human Flourishing Chapter 10

2. Stress, Health, and Human Flourishing
Stress: Some Basic Concepts
Stressors – Things That Push Our Buttons
Stress Reactions – From Alarm to Exhaustion
Stress Effects and Health
Stress and AIDS
Stress and Cancer
Stress and Heart Disease
Stress and Health: The Role of Personality

3. Stress, Health, and Human Flourishing
Coping With Stress
Personal Control

4. Stress: Some Basic Concepts
Stress is defined as the process by which we perceive and respond to certain events called stressors that we appraise as threatening or challenging.

5. Stress Appraisal
Stress arises less from the event itself than from how we appraise it. (Lazarus, 1998)

6. Three Main Types of Stressors
Catastrophes
Unpredictable large-scale events
Significant life changes
Leaving home, getting married, changing jobs, death of a loved one, etc.
One is more disease-prone following such changes
Daily hassles
More significant hassles include low wages, poor health, neighborhood problems
Can lead to high blood pressure and other health problems

7. Stress Reactions Stress response involves mind and body.
Walter Cannon (1929) found extreme cold, lack of oxygen, and emotion arousal all trigger release of stress hormones from adrenal glands.
Sympathetic nervous system engages fight-or-flight response, which mobilizes energy and activity for attacking or escaping a threat.

9. Stress Reactions
Hans Selye (1936) studied animals’ reactions to stressors.
Discovered that the body has a common pattern of responding to a variety of stressors, which he called the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS):
Alarm
Resistance
Exhaustion

10. General Adaptation Syndrome

11. Other Ways of Dealing with Stress
Withdraw, pull back, and conserve energy
Some may become paralyzed with fear in the face of disaster.
Tend-and-befriend – under stress, some people (especially women) often both provide support to and seek support from others
Men are more likely to withdraw, self-medicate, or become aggressive.

12. Stress Effects and Health
Psychoneuroimmunology – a field that studies how psychological, neural, and endocrine processes affect our immune system and health
Immune response includes two types of lymphocytes (white blood cells)
macrophages, and natural killer (NK) cells.

13. The Immune Response

14. Immune System Errors
Responding too strongly: the immune system may attack the body’s own tissues
Arthritis, allergies
Underreaction: May allow dormant virus to erupt or cancer cells to multiply
Women have stronger immune systems.
This makes them less likely to get infections, but more susceptible to diseases like lupus and MS.

15. Stress Effects and Health
The immune system becomes less active when the body is flooded with stress hormones.
Wounds heal more slowly
More vulnerable to colds

16. Stress and AIDS People with AIDS already have a damaged immune system.
Stress and negative emotions speed the transition from HIV to AIDS.
Stress leads to a faster decline in those with AIDS.
Reducing stress can help control AIDS.

17. Stress and Cancer Stress does not create cancer cells, but:
Stress may weaken a person’s ability to fight off cancer.

18. Stress and Heart Disease
Stress is closely linked with coronary heart disease – the clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart.
Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death in North America.
Study of tax accountants – risk of heart disease peaks right before April 15.

19. Stress and Health: The Role of Personality
Nine-year study of men, aged At start, they were interviewed and categorized:
Type A: competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, anger-prone, combat-ready
Type B: easygoing and relaxed
At end of study, 257 heart attacks
69% were Type A

20. Is Stress All Bad?
Stress motivates us, invigorates our lives, makes our life challenging and productive.
But stress makes us less resistant to disease.

21. Stress and Health:
The Stress Effect

22. Depression: More on Mental Health Affecting the Heart
Study: Depression increases risk of worsening heart problems by 400%
Study: Depression increases risk of death as much as smoking does.

23. Human Flourishing Coping With Stress
Study: the single trait shared by 169 people over 100 was the ability to manage stress well

24. Coping With Stress
Problem-focused coping
Emotion-focused coping

25. Personal Control
Personal control is our sense of seeing ourselves in control of our environment.
Psychologists study this in two ways:
They correlate peoples fellings of control with behaviors and achievements.
They experiment, by raising or lowering people’s sense of control and noting the effects.

26. Control, Morale, and Health
Seligman (1975) strapped dogs in a harness and gave them electric shocks
When later placed in another situation where they could escape the punishment by simply leaping over a hurdle, the dogs cowered and did not move
Other dogs that were able to escape the first shocks did not act this way

27. Control, Morale, and Health
Learned helplessness is the term for the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events.
Perceived loss of control predicts health problems.
Ability to control one’s environment leads to greater happiness and productivity.

28. Who’s at the Controls?
Is your life out of your control? Is the world run by a few powerful people?
Do you control your own fate? Is being a success a matter of hard work?
External locus of control: the perception that chance or outside forces beyond personal control determine our fate
Internal locus of control: the perception that we control our own fate

29. “Internals” and “Externals”
Internals assume an internal locus of control.
believe they control their own destiny
achieve more in school and work, enjoy better health, and feel less depressed than there counterparts:
Externals assume an external locus of control.
view that chance or outside forces control their fate

30. Self Control
Self Control: The ability to control impulses and delay gratification
Self-control is like a muscle:
it grows stronger with exercise
Self-discipline in one area may strengthen self-control in general and lead to a less stressed life

31. Is the Glass Half Full?
Optimism is the anticipation of positive outcomes
Pessimism is the anticipation of negative outcomes
Optimists tend to have better health, and may live longer
Success requires optimism but enough pessimism to us alert

32. Social Support
Feeling liked and encouraged by friends and family promotes both happiness and health.
Social support can calm the cardiovascular system and foster stronger immune functioning.
Both good and bad habits can quickly migrate to ones friends.

33. Finding Meaning
Doing a Google search of ‘the meaning of life’ resulted 6,720,000 hits
Those with a strong sense of meaning
See a purpose for their lives and have strong values, and a sense of self-worth.
Those who find meaning in a tragic event have fewer adverse health effects and lower rates of depression.

34. Managing Stress Effects
Sometimes we cannot avoid experiencing stress.
What can we do to manage it?
Aerobic exercise
Relaxation
Meditation
Spirituality

35. Aerobic Exercise
Aerobic exercise, sustained activity that increases heart and lung fitness, may reduce stress, depression and anxiety
Study: mildly depressed women improved more with exercise than with relaxation exercises

36. Relaxation: Lifestyle Modification
Study with Type A heart attack survivors: a control group was given advice about medications, diet, and exercise.
A second group was given this advice PLUS guidance in modifying their lifestyle–
Walking, laughing, eating slowly
Can we tell which part of the intervention made the difference?

37. Relaxation: Meditation
Relaxation procedures can provide relief from headaches, high blood pressure, anxiety, and insomnia.
The relaxation response:
Sit quietly in a comfortable position. Close your eyes. Relax your musicles, starting with your feet and moving slowly upward. Breathe slowly, and on the exhale focus on a word, phrase or prayer. Repeat for minutes.

38. Spirituality
The faith factor: Religiously active people tend to live longer

39. Possible explanations for the Faith Factor?
Religiously active people tend to have healthier life-styles.
less alcohol, dietary fat, and smoking
Belonging to a faith community is to have access to a support network.
Religion encourages marriage, another predictor of health and longevity
Religion promotes positive emotion, optimism, a stable world-view, and relaxed meditation.

40. What Accounts for the Faith Factor?

41. How to Flourish
Some qualities and influences can help us flourish by making us emotionally and physically stronger:
A sense of control
Optimistic outlook
Healthy habits
Social support
Relaxation
A sense of meaning
Spirituality