Hans selye what is stress

Those patients, he understood, shared something in common with his sick rats. His intention was to find out what that connection was, and he in fact decided very quickly to devote his life to the discovery of the root of this nonspecific illness. Indeed, working out the mechanism of this kind of stereotyped syndrome of response to injury as such might be much more important to medicine than the discovery of yet another sex hormone.

In piecing together the puzzle, Selye was aided by two other bits of medical knowledge. Certain treatments, he knew, were useful to patients suffering from just about anything. Doctors prescribed to most patients things like rest, eating easily digestible food, and protection against great variations in temperature.

Also, he recalled that there existed a number of nonspecific treatments in the history of medicine — and, in fact, in contemporary medicine, too — that, though odd some would say barbaric , had met with undeniable if sporadic success: practices like the injection of foreign substances into the body, fever therapy, shock therapy, and bloodletting.

It didnt take long for Selye to formulate an idea that made all of this seemingly disparate information coalesce. This system, in short, governs the amount and kind of response the body produces to combat a stressing agent. Simplified, the hypothalamus the bridge between the brain and endocrine system sends a message to the pituitary gland a hormone-producing gland embedded in bones at the base of the skull to release ACTH adrenocorticotrophic hormone into the blood stream.

This signal prompts the adrenal cortex located above the kidneys to create corticoids, another hormone, from available raw material. These corticoids are then dispersed to the places in the body they are needed, where they are put to use in the various stages of defense against a stressing agent.

Though we use the term almost exclusively in a negative sense, he knew that a little bit of stress keeps life exciting. Selye, who died in , had these instructions for finding the right balance:. Write to Lily Rothman at lily.

Hans Selye's experiments with rats shed pioneering light on how stress affects health. By Lily Rothman. But this adaptation is not good for your health, since energy is concentrated on stress reactions. This is the final stage after long-term exposure to a stressor. Language German English French. Search Search for:.

The Centre for Studies on Human Stress CSHS is dedicated to improving the physical and mental health of Canadians by empowering individuals with scientifically grounded information on the effects of stress on the brain and body. Search here:. History of stress. History of stress The term stress was borrowed from the field of physics by one of the fathers of stress research Hans Selye.

The Great Debate Selye pioneered the field of stress research and provided convincing arguments that stress impacted health. Stage 1 : Alarm reaction This is the immediate reaction to a stressor. The group is not alone in this mission. Some studies have taught us that our perception of stress affects how damaging, or not, it will be.

Others suggest that moderate amounts of stress seem to improve learning and memory. Rather than bemoaning stress or avoiding it, or worse, feeling proud of having an abundance of it, perhaps the best advice now is that we ought be practicing methods for transforming it.

The story of Hans Selye is perhaps waiting for its Hollywood treatment, starring a complex scientist who changed our culture, but never became a household name. As Jackson notes, in the early part of the 20th century, theorists across disciplines were developing ideas about our adaptive or maladaptive responses—to war, to accelerated industrialization, to new technology, and to fast-changing social norms.

Their theses are remarkably similar. Yet, importantly, Selye advanced our understanding of chronic strain, while other scientists had focused on acute forms of stress.

Internal tobacco company documents reveal that Selye had provided arguments contending that heart disease might reasonably be the result of any number of stressors, and that it would be difficult pinpoint smoking as a cause when the patient could be dealing with a host of issues. Ironically, the father of stress has never had to answer for his work that contributed to so much more of it.