Stressball, VII; Stress Changes DNA
I’m still working on continuing sharing what I’ve learned from my recent PHE 363 lectures on stress. (I did well on the quiz today, for anyone who remembered that I had it! I think I may have even earned one of the two extra credit points!)
I left you hearing about Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome, where portions of your brain are actually increased portions of your brain due to chronic stress. Scary, huh? Well just wait until I start talking to your stressed out selves today!
(BTW, thanks for the comments lately, guys, I’ve triggered something in ya’ll with these stress posts, and it’s exciting that I get so much email about ‘em!)
So, within stress, your body is striving for homeostasis (staying the same) and stress is the fight to get back to normal. Your entire being is affected by stress (as well as the anticipation of stress)!
Upon realization of the stressor, your body begins to “mobilize resources for escape & surviving injury.” The digestion of food, your reproductive function, the ability to build & rebuild tissues and your immune function are all inhibited by stress. You can’t control these things, no matter how well you think you handle stress.
Chronic stress is bad. It’s as simple as that. This chronic stress is directly correlated with an increase in respiratory infections. Not good. Obviously.
There are two main systems in your body that react upon being stressed; the endocrine system and the nervous system. Within the endocrine system, both long-lasting cortisol & fast-acting catecholamines are released from the adrenal glands and into your system. The nervous system releases even more of these fast-acting catecholamines from the sympathetic nerve fibers as well.
The release of these hormones and chemicals has an intense reaction on your cellular level. Cortisol enters the cells (aided by receptors), gets into the nucleus and then attaches to the cell’s DNA. This attachment actually CHANGES the genetic expression & actions of the cell. So, in short stress releases cortisol which is changing our DNA.
Tomorrow we’ll take a closer look at what stress does specifically within your nervous system. That’s just as fun & scary!
(Stressed about your stress now?)
mental & emotional health, stress, cortisol, Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome, hormones, nervous system, DNA
October 6th, 2007 at 8:58 am
This just reinforces my notion that I need to fulfill my lifelong ambition of becoming a beach bum.
October 6th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
I’m pretty sure that my kidney stone 3 weeks before graduation my senior year of college was stress related… my body decided that I was going to spend 3 days in bed whether I liked it or not.
October 8th, 2007 at 8:00 am
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October 9th, 2007 at 8:06 am
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