Stress

Well it's about to be that time of the semester where everybody starts to become a little overwhelmed. Only 3 weeks of school left means lots of cramming in, and lots of study time. To me and many other college students it also means lots of STRESS!

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Most of us already know the causes of stress. Bad family environments, overworking, frustration, exhaustion, etc. But what really causes stress in our bodies? Is it just an emotional feeling, or is there actually something going on with our organs, nerves, and even muscles in ourselves?

Stress activates the sympathetic branch of autonomous nervous system. Not only does it activate this nervous system but stress even has specific hormones, that are released. Epinephrine is a hormone, that many of us know as adrenaline. When we are stressed, and have feelings such as anger, or fear, this hormone is released and causes our heart rates to increase, our muscle strength, blood pressure, and even our sugar metabolism increase. For some instances this hormone is even used as a stimulant for cardiac arrest. The other hormone that gets released when we experience stress is called Cortisol. This hormone is secreted by the adrenal glands of our body, and helps with immune function, glucose metabolism (correlates with the epinephrine hormone), regulation of blood pressure, inflammatory response, and even the release of insulin to maintain a blood sugar level.

According to ScienceDaily, the sympathetic nervous output produce the Fight-or-Flight response. It allows our body to divert blood flow to large muscles in our body's as our bodies prepare to either fight off something, or run from something. The less blood flow to our digestive system, and even some of our other organs that don't necessarily run or fight, causes some different symptoms we may experience when feeling stressed. These symptoms include, dry mouth, motor agitation, sweating, enlarge pupils, and even insomnia.

If the stress is continued, activating the sympathetic nervous system, then the parasympathetic nervous system doesn't activate, which doesn't allow for good blood flow to other organs and muscles in the body. This also prevents good bowel movements, and the pupils will even constrict.

As far as preventing stress, there really is no medical management or exercises to do. In most cases for myself, and other college students that may be feeling some stress these next few weeks, it's better to just adapt to what needs to be done. Get yourself in the mindset now of studying constantly, not getting a ton of sleep (as bad as that sounds), just push yourself now, so that at the last minute things won't feel as if there piled on to you, causing the stress to increase. Stress is clearly bad on our bodies, but if we push through it now, once these few weeks are over we can all recuperate our bodies, and be back to normal. Stress-free, and having a great summer!

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References

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(medicine)