Stress Components

Health, Stress, & Inflammation

Interestingly, students’experiences of test anxietyare also experienced with physical symptoms of headaches, sore throats, fatigue, nausea, earaches, and some intestinal discomfort. When compared with 6-8 week pretest cortisol levels, testing plasma cortisol levels have been found to be significantly elevated. Levels gradually decline in the two-week period following the examination. (Read more)

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Mental Illness & Inflammation

The neuroimmune effects of a trauma’s impact can be experienced as long as twenty years later. Vietnam combat veterans having PTSD symptoms of anxiety, depression, numbing, intrusive memories, etc., have also had higher adjusted mean white blood cell, total lymphocyte, T-cell, and CD4 cell counts and greater incidence of circulatory, digestive, musculoskeletal, CNS, respiratory, and infectious diseases than veterans not exposed to battle. Interestingly, Israeli combat veterans with PTSD also presented increased plasma inflammatory factor levels of IL-1β …(Read more)

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Mental Illness & Stress Hormones

Patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and/or major depression present different adrenocortical responses to stress, e.g. hypocortisolemia and hypercortisolemia, respectively. PTSD expression is is associated with negative-feedback sensitivity; the latter, depression, is associated with negative-feedback inhibition. The former, hypocortisolism, is a state of chronic low levels of the circulating steroid cortisol. During CRH and ACTH exogenous challenge, PTSD patients demonstrate reduced endogenous cortisol synthesis and secretion. (Read more)

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HPA & Arousal

When a stimulus is perceived as stressful, e.g. external or internal cues of threat, pain, or failure of expectation, stress- elicited corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) neural activity in the limbic system’s amygdala provides input to the branstem’s pon’s locus coeruleus (LC) to stimulate noradrenergic neurons for sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity and the medial parvocellular region of the paraventricular nucleus (mPVNpc) of the hypothalamus for hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) activity. With increases in the synthesis of PVN CRH, CRH and arginine-vasopressin (AVP) are both released from the terminals in the median eminence into the hypothalamic hypophysial portal vascular system that connects the hypothalamus with the pituitary gland (Read more)

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Physical Conditions & Stress Hormones

Many physical illnesses also have different stress-induced neurohormonal composites. Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a functional gastrointestinal disorder with associated symptoms of visceral pain hypersensitivity, especially in the small bowel or colon, back pain, tiredness or lethargy, frequent headaches, urinary urgency and frequency, nocturia, dyspareunia, and thigh pain. IBS patients, like those with PTSD, have presented alterations in resting diurnal cortisol levels and higher mean and prolonged evening urinary cortisol levels when compared with controls. (Read more)

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