In todays world stress is all around the daily human life, it doesn’t matter if you are one year old or one hundred years old stress is always around you. But now you may be asking yourself what stress is. Stress is psychological and behavioral reactions. These psychological events occur when people are in a threatening or challenging event in life. Stress is not always bad. Stress can at times be good. It can provide people with extra energy and alertness needed at the time being. According to Patrick Carrions, “Distress and Eustress” Eustress is known as the good kind of stress, The type of stress that will keep a runner to push hard towards the last final quarter mile of a run. Eustress will keep a survivor of a plane crash living and pushing to survive. But stress is always not that positive and can be in your disadvantage in milliseconds. For example, this is called distress. Distress is the act of negative stress, the bad stress. Distress does not motivate someone to move on and stops one to a paralyzing moment in life. For example, a salesman is giving a sales pitch in front of his bosses that can give him a raise or can no longer make him stay in the company, they buckle under total pressure and forget about what they talk about. These are all examples of Stressors, Distress as well as Eustress.
Whom do these stressors affect? Stress is in everyone, from the age of one to one hundred everyone is affected by stressors. But teenagers from the ages of thirteen to nineteen are the group that is affected most. This is when high school starts for most
teenagers and in general their social life changes, peer pressure falls into the mix as well as schooling and extra curricular activates in their day to day process falls into mix. A source by Brown University titled “Managing stress in Teens and Adolescents” states that; in 2013 a survey by the APA found that stress is extremely common among teenagers. Teenagers who responded to the survey report they’re experiencing what they think are unhealthy levels of stress, especially during the school year. This is a great first example as to how teens are affected by stress. Teenagers have a lot of pressure by family members, schoolteachers and even the state itself for the schooling system itself. Teenagers are expected to be the best of the best, to have the best ACT score, the best test scores and to be obedient to any laws and changes placed. Although what does not fall into play is the fact that teenagers do have a social life. They must go out with friends and socialize to develop eustress. With out eustress the constant affect of negative stress hurts the teenage mind and causes bad psychological issues such as depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts as well as anorexia and many other eating disorders slowly hurting the human body. The mind and body are closely connected, and stress can affect the body negatively. A survey conducted by Brown University found teens experience both emotional and physical symptoms of stress. Common symptoms include feeling nervous or anxious, feeling tired, procrastinating or neglecting responsibilities, feeling overwhelmed, having negative thoughts and experiencing changes in sleeping habits. Problems with concentrating and changes in eating habits (eating too much or too little) are also linked to stress.
It’s normal to have some stress in life. But if stress persists at high levels for a long time, it can have lasting negative effects on health. Chronic (long-term) stress can cause anxiety, high blood pressure and a weakened immune system, and can contribute to diseases such as depression, obesity and heart disease.
Stress also affects middle-aged adults as well; in some instances too much stress puts some adults in the category of psychotic patients. Steffen Moritz wrote an article about the correlation of stress and psychosis titled “Stress is a bad advisor. Stress primes poor decision making in deluded psychotic patients”. Psychosis is defined as “a loss of reality” because psychotic patients experience and believe things that aren’t real. There are two different kinds of psychosis symptoms: positive symptoms and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms “add” things like thoughts or behaviors. Delusions are a strong belief in something that isn’t true. A common delusion is the belief that someone is following you or watching you. Hallucinations are things you sense that aren’t really there. You can experience a hallucination with any of the five senses (hearing, sight, taste, touch, smell). The most common hallucination is hearing another voice talking that others can’t hear. Speech is so jumbled or illogical that no one can understand it. You have a hard time organizing or completing tasks, or you don’t act the way you used to. You might have a hard time with daily tasks like cooking or getting dressed, or you might suddenly laugh when someone tells a sad story. Your movements are very slow, awkward and rigid or are very fast. Negative symptoms take something away. You might not being able to show emotions, talk much or sometimes at all or be motivated to do anything.
Negative symptoms often aren’t as distinct as positive symptoms, and they can look like symptoms of a mood disorder like depression or the side effects of medication. All of these issues are rare but common affects of stress.
But enough about the negatives of stress, for stress can also bring good to ones life. To be “Stressed out” does not mean that ones life is falling apart and their body is weakening with it. According to the article, “ Stress: The Good, the Bad, and the Healthy” By author Rebecca James, There is also good stress. Good stress in general is very short term and does not last as long as bad stress. But unlike bad stress good stress challenges the human body in a way as more of an exercise for the human brain and uplifts the emotions of the human being instead of bringing the emotions down and sad like bad stress. There are many examples of good stress such as, working on a project or even working on a long final paper due in less than twenty-four hours. If one is working on a project or a final paper they most likely know about the due dates of their said project or paper and the fact that they are cramming in every last word to meet the requirements is known as good stress. The reason being is because the human brain is working as hard as it possibly can to meet assignment requirements. This instinct can trace back to the early stages of man two hundred thousand years ago. The brain was always under constant stress and was constantly trying to survive. That good stress is what pushed the human body to the limits and made mankind live this long. That “good stress” is also known as the “fight or flight” response. When you are stressed you enter the ‘fight or flight’ mode – your body begins producing more of the stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol works to prepare your body to run away from the threat it thinks you’re facing. To do this, it
suppresses the immune system by lowering amounts of a protein required for signaling other immune cells. This in turn results in a reduced number of immune cells known as lymphocytes. Lymphocytes are a major component of the immune system, working to recognize harmful invaders and kill off antigens that would can cause disease. With fewer lymphocytes, the body is at increased risk of infection and disease, and more susceptible to contracting acute illnesses. The body also takes longer to heal from wounds and illnesses.Ultimately, the immune system is considerably weakened, resulting in more infections but also potentially headaches, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma, and gastric ulcers. But if good stress is used to its maximum capability The human mind within milliseconds chemicals like epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol are pushed through mind and body and give the human bodyalmost super human like reflexes. Unfortunately you will not turn into a superhero but what does happen in this time is your sense of vision, sight and hearing all get better. Your heart rate and blood pressure all increase as well causing the human body to have laser like focus and a much higher pain tolerance to help you with any stressful situation you may have gotten into. Now, having a higher pain tolerance is most likely unneeded and will not be used while writing a paper or doing a project, but the laser like focus and increase in senses definitely will help in the long run for good stress. Stress not only helps the human body physically and mentally, it also helps it throughout the immune system as well. Negative stress does not help the immune system at all. If anything it harms it even more. Negative stress will create chronic inflammation that harms tissue as well as suppress the immune cells that are needed to help stop the spread of infections.
But if handled correctly good stress will provide much needed benefits for the human immune system.
In todays world stress is all around the daily human life, it doesn’t matter if you are one year old or one hundred years old stress is always around you. But now you may be asking yourself what stress is. Stress is psychological and behavioral reactions. One might get extremely sick and be struck by mood disorders or even brain damage. But one may also use positive stress to help them in any situation. Stress is in any lifestyle, everyday of your life you will encounter a stressful situation. Stress can be good and make you feel like the most confidant person on earth or stress can be bad and shut down the human body making you feel extra sick. You get stressed out and it is up to you if this stress will benefit you or harm you. How will you handle your stress?