 |
|
|
General Adaptive Syndrome
The Alarm Phase
The Resistance Phase
Exhaustion
|
Stress is a reaction. It's a method your body has evolved over hundreds of millions of years to deal with danger. We should begin by drawing a distinction between stress and stressor; a stressor is the danger; something that causes stress, that places an unusual or unexpected demand on the body. The demand needn't be unpleasant or unwanted, but it does place an extra demand on the body, causing the body to divert extra resources to deal with it. Now you may think that after so many billion years we'd have evolved to have extra resources stored away to deal with this. We have, but they don't last long. Very soon after encountering stress the body starts going into resource debt.
What is stress? You can do worse than think of it as your body's overdraft facility.
| |
| | |
| The body has caught up with sabre tooth tigers and measles, but it hasn't really adapted to traffic jams and unreasonable bosses yet; we're kind of on our own there. Canadian physiologist Dr Hans Selye identified a set of responses that the body used to cope with anything it hadn't really encountered before. No matter what it was, if something was upsetting the body then the same set of reactions would kick in. The response was applied whatever happened, so it was general, it was designed to change the body to cope with or fight off whatever was attacking it, so it was adaptive, and it had a range of 'weapons' in its arsenal, so we call it a syndrome. What we call stress, Selye called the General Adaptive Syndrome. |
| G.A.S. has three phases: |
| Phase one is called the alarm phase, or fight or flight reflex. As far as your body's concerned you've just been jumped by a large predator. You need to think and run (or hit). The body immediately begins dumping sugar and hormones into the blood stream and sending alarm signals along your autonomic nervous system, or ANS. Your ANS is normally responsible for keeping everything ticking along smoothly. Not today. As a result of the alarm phase: |
- Your heart rate, and the strength of your heartbeats increases.
- Blood vessels supplying non-essential systems (skin and digestive system mostly) shut down, allowing as much blood as possible to be fed to the brain, heart & lungs, and muscles. Run now, digest later.
- The spleen dumps its emergency reserve of red blood cells into your blood stream, and production of red blood cells is increased to maximum. The blood's clotting ability is increased, as the body prepares for potential damage.
- The liver dumps its sugar reserves into the bloodstream, ready for increased demand by the body's systems.
- Sweat production increases - if the body overheats then it will tire and that isn't good if you're in danger
- Breathing increases, becoming deeper and faster. Oxygen is energy.
- The digestive system is put on hold, including the production of saliva.
|
| The heart pounds, the pulse races, the mouth dries, the palms sweat. The astute will have noticed that some people pay good money to get into that state, some people do alarm reaction for fun. Selye would agree with you. In fact Selye believed that some stress was necessary for health. But first things first. Here we are at the end of the alarm reaction and we've scared off / outrun whatever was threatening us, right? But what happens if we can't? What happens if the threat (Selye called it a stressor) just won't go away? When that happens, the body digs in for a siege. It resists.
|
| Phase two of the general adaptive syndrome is called the resistance phase. After the initial rush of hormones, sugar and blood of the alarm phase, phase two is handed over to the brain. It's a process complicated enough to give you a nosebleed - the process is regulated by growth hormone releasing factor (GHRF), Adrenocorticotropin, and Thyrotropin Releasing Factor (TRF). There may be some people thinking that if stress releases growth hormone then it's a shortcut in training. It isn't; the GH released as part of the resistance phase is used by the body to ramp up metabolism, not to grow. The body produces glucocortisoids which speed up the life processes, making more sugar and oxygen available to the body. The most common glucocortisoid is cortisol. Remember cortisol, we'll be coming back to it later.
|
| The key to the resistance phase is debt. The body is working hard to fight off what it sees as a threat and it is running up a resource debt. Blood pressure is high, metabolism is increased. The body is working hard and it is going to get tired, you're going to feel tired, you're going to feel run down. You're less personally effective; you just can't do as much if your body is diverting energy (strength, vitality) to deal with a stressor.
|
| In normal day to day life threats are challenges; they come, we meet them, we learn from them, we grow. It's a big part of how we become people. Even chronic threats can be incorporated into a successful life, can be managed. Some threats can't be managed however, some stressors will attack and attack until the body is just too weak to resist.
|
| Phase three is exhaustion. The glucose reserves are gone. The body has been keeping the blood pressure up by holding sodium in the body, but it's been a dangerous gamble because to hold on to the sodium it's had to dump potassium and without potassium your cells begin to die. The organs weaken, less oxygen, less fuel, they weaken more. Without intervention the exhaustion phase is lethal.
|
| Sadly exhaustion is a factor, and a cause of death, in chronic illness. Work stress doesn't tend to get that far. Work stress tends to get as far as the state athletes call breakdown. At this point the body is compromised, resources are depleted. The immune system is weakened, that most resource hungry organ the brain isn't getting what it needs. You're tired, you're weak, you're prone to every bug going, you lack motivation and you feel sluggish and stupid. Everything is an effort, everything is difficult. You're finding it almost impossible to learn or make decisions. You're in (or approaching) a condition almost indistinguishable from severe depression; burnout.
|
