Stress

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i. What is stress?

Stress is the body’s ability of an individual responds to any demand of changes in physical, emotion or mental to cope with life. It is also defined as the patterns of responses an individual makes to stimulus the events that disturbs the equilibrium of the individual’s life or exceed the ability to cope with it. Stress can come from any situation that will make an individual frustrated, angry, depression or nervous.

Stress is caused by stressor, a chemical or biological agent that triggers some adaptive response on an individual. There are two types of stressors: external stressor and internal stressor. External stressors include adverse physical conditions such as pain or hot or cold temperatures or stressful psychological environments such as poor working conditions or abusive relationships. Internal stressors can also be physical like infections and other illnesses, inflammation. It can also be in psychological such as intense worry about a harmful event that may or may not occur. As far as anyone can tell, internal psychological stressors are rare or absent in most animals except humans.

Besides external and internal stressors, stressor also can be categories into acute and chronic. Acute stressor is in short term while chronic stressor is in long term. Acute stress is the reaction to an immediate threat or known as the fight or flight response. Example is as danger. Common acute stressors include isolation, hunger, danger, noise, infection and so on. Nowadays, modern life is at stressful situations that are not short-lived. The urge to act must therefore be controlled. Stress, then, becomes chronic. Common chronic stressors are loneliness, persistence worries, ongoing pressure work and long-term relationship problem.

References

1. Wikipedia contributor, retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stressor