Human’s stress system is a complex system which connects brain into hormone receptors and into hormones. These connections’ normal function is essential to what people call the homeostasis as well as the normal physical heath and thus mental health. When a certain person’s body is too much exhausted and could no longer contain such stress, the stress system will basically malfunction and if that happens, the homeostasis of the human body and the physical and mental functions will be altered and thus will be placed at risk (Ader, 2006).
Walter Cannon is said to be the first ever physiologist who called the emotionally disturbing stimuli as stress. He defined stress as a certain stimulus or force which tends to cause undesirable emotions and thus lead people to a disrupted or disturbing emotional and mental state. In Cannon’s study, he defined stress as something that provokes the equilibrium of human towards life; a challenge to the human’s physiological and psychological balanced life (Carroll, 1992). The most often stimuli or environment that causes people stress is the working environment.
In many researches regarding stress and its origin, researchers found out that working stress is definitely connected with psychological disturbance and physical health problems. For example, the poorness of a certain person’s heart health status can be explained by the theory that he or she has a lot of problems at work and because of that he or she needs to spend more time at his or her office. If a certain person experiences this kind of situation, his or her problems and hardworking would cause him or her to lack enough oxygen intake and thus his or her heart will experience malfunction (Carroll, 1992).
Trauma is considered as one of the common stressors and if a certain person’s brain could not contain the impact of this kind of stress, that person would possibly acquire a mental disorder namely Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This kind of disorder includes anxiety problem or disorder which is caused by a certain experience and can lead to further psychological disorders such as depression, the tendency to commit suicide, distrust, and even substance abuse (America, 2007). Stress could create a great impact on human’s physiological health as much as it does with psychological health.
Some of the simple consequences that stress might cause human are the increase of heart rate, body muscles in tension, having a high blood pressure, non-cardiac pain that a stressed person would feel on his or her chest, lacking of enough energy to do other task, and having a digestive upset or loosing food appetite. Recent researches shows that stress affect people’s physical health and that stress could directly cause diseases in cardiovascular organ especially if you are a person who has a high blood pressure (Bressert, 2006).
Stress affects people’s physical and mental health through triggering and interfering human’s system which produces hormones and interfering the immune system as well. If the said interference of stress continues and initiates an inflammatory state to the immune system, then it will soon lead to physical and mental symptoms and thus start to establish different mental disorders or physical diseases.
As a response of the immune system to stress, the immune system tends to modify the production of hormones which is said to be perceived by the brain and leads the brain to be affected. Furthermore, it has been explained through researches that the process of immune system in connection to the human brain creates a great impact and influences human cognition and mental state as well as physical state.
In addition researches also concluded that early childhood stress experiences could show its effect on the later life period which might definitely add up to the current stress that a certain person is already experiencing and thus it could lead into greater risk of having health problems either mentally or physically (“Stress affects hormones which affect immune system which alters mental and physical disease,” 2004).
References Ader, R. (2006). Psychoneuroimmunology: Elsevier. America, M. H. (2007). Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) [Electronic Version].Retrieved November 28, from http://www. mentalhealthamerica. net/go/ptsd Bressert, S. (2006). The Impact of Stress [Electronic Version]. Retrieved November 28, from http://psychcentral. com/lib/2006/the-impact-of-stress/ Carroll, D. (1992).
Health Psychology: Stress, Behaviour and Disease: Routledge. Stress affects hormones which affect immune system which alters mental and physical disease [Electronic. (2004). Version]. Retrieved November 28, from http://www. medicalnewstoday. com/articles/7398. php#ratethis.