6 ms·

Stress is a rather generic term. Emotional stress and biological stress are two ways of distinguishing different kinds of stress. Biological stress is not gett

Stress is a rather generic term. Emotional stress and biological stress are two ways of distinguishing different kinds of stress. Biological stress is not getting enough nutrients, having to deal with bacterial exotoxin/endotoxin [1] (as pneumonia, a hostile microbiome, etc), lack of sunlight (UV light -> Vitamin D; red light refreshes Cytochrome C Oxidase, an enzyme in the mitochondria [0]), consuming artificial sugar and other fake foods, etc... Emotional stress is related to how a person responds to situations -- to quote the article, "why crappy childhoods make for adult brains that don’t work well". Different people can respond to the same situation in completely different ways... Some people are able to use their "crappy childhood" as motivation to make something of themselves, while others are disabled by their own similar childhood. The tragedy of our situation is how the medical profession considers Dr. McEwen's work as interesting but doesn't do anything with it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase --- this page doesn't talk about the use of certain wavelengths of red/infrared light to refresh the enzyme. search for 'red light therapy', then buy heat lamps if you're interested. My current setup cost around $20. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotoxin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotoxin

danharaj 7y ago
Emotional stress is biological stress unless you believe in an extreme form of cartesian dualism incompatible with modern understanding of physiology.
- copperx 7y ago
  Sure, it's atoms all the way down; however, it is still important to make a distinction. Biological stress can be beneficial for our well being, while emotional stress (fight or flight response) has mostly deleterious effects.
  - internet_user 7y ago
    You could have hormetic effects from psychological stressors as well. They really are identical on a certain level.
- tomhoward 7y ago
  I agree with you and I’d guess your parent commenter would too. Yet, many people who consider themselves to be rational and scientifically-minded, and who reject dualism, scoff at the notion that physiological illness can be caused/exacerbated by emotional stress. Try this out some time: suggest that an illness like chronic fatigue syndrome or general autoimmune illness is at least somewhat linked to emotional stress and/or trauma, and see what kinds of reactions you get (or go and look at the discussions about this topic in CFS communities).
  - internet_user 7y ago
    Amazing how conversations swing from one side of extreme to another in just two comments. What's next, are you going to suggest basilar skull fractures are somewhat linked to emotional stress? The responses you'd get would likely be due to PTSD induced by interacting with the very rational and scientifically-minded profit-maximizing medical industry, and/or incompetent physicians unable to provide an effective relief for the underlying condition. Try out this some time: try to reduce stigma around various disorders instead of suggesting running nonconsensual unethical experiments, bordering on sociopathy, on those suffering from difficult to treat disorders.
    - tomhoward 7y ago
      > What's next, are you going to suggest basilar skull fractures are somewhat linked to emotional stress? If you want to discuss this topic in good faith you should edit your comment to remove this appeal to ridicule. I don't know what you think I'm advocating that motivates the bilious accusations in the rest of your comment. From what I can tell: - We seem to agree that people suffering chronic, difficult-to-treat illnesses have it extremely tough, and it would be ideal if they didn't (I know this from personal experience) - We also seem to agree that the profit motive creates perverse incentives in medical research and treatment. Outside of that, your comment seems to be just another example of the very phenomenon I was pointing out. To be clear: I've experienced difficult-to-treat illness that seems to be autoimmune-related for much of my life. I'm now almost completely well, having undertaken a variety of treatments including deep emotional/trauma healing work over the past 8+ years. There is no mainstream physician, of any supposed level of competence, who would have recommended the approach that has enabled me to achieve the level of health I've now reached. There are notable exceptions – Gabor Maté and Bruce Lipton being the most prominent – yet neither are taken seriously by the scientific/medical mainstream, despite both having advanced mainstream medical credentials.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  A wide gulf exists between consciousness and neurons. There are many easy abstractions to make between the two and putting the stress from starvation and the stress from grieving a parent's death in the same bucket is pointlessly pedantic.
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  I agree with you, but there is an entire field ( psychology ) predicated on the mind and brain duality. So perhaps they might view some or all emotional stress as "mental/psychological" stress not entirely tied to biological stress.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > but there is an entire field ( psychology ) predicated on the mind and brain duality. No, psychology isn't predicated on mind/body duality. Much of it is arguably compatible with mind/body duality simply because it doesn't address physical root causes but only higher-level phenomena, but going beyond that to say that it is predicated on mind/body duality is like saying that Computer Science, because it deals with abstract computation and mostly not the underlying physical mechanisms (left to the separate field of computer engineering) is predicated on computation/processor duality.
    - dntbnmpls 7y ago
      > No, psychology isn't predicated on mind/body duality. Can you tell me how psychology exists without the mind? > Much of it is arguably compatible with mind/body duality simply because it doesn't address physical root So it is predicated on the mind/brain. > because it deals with abstract computation and mostly not the underlying physical mechanisms (left to the separate field of computer engineering) is predicated on computation/processor duality Your analogy seems off and you assertion contradicts itself. Computer science is a math. It lives in the world of "forms". Computer science exists without the processor. It existed before the processor. Lambda calculus and the turing machine existed before the processor. Just like arithmetic existed before calculators. Are you saying the mind exists without the brain? The mind existed before the brain? So aren't we back to square one - the mind/brain duality? If psychology isn't predicated on mind/brain duality, what is it predicated on?
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > Can you tell me how psychology exists without the mind? It doesn't (well, except maybe behavioral psychology, which arguably could) exist without the mind. It just doesn't care one way or another about whether the mind is a direct product of the physical body or not. “Mind/body” duality isn't just “the mind exist”, but “the mind is at least in part not a property of the body”. > If psychology isn't predicated on mind/brain duality, what is it predicated on? Depends what particular branch. Behavioral psychology is predicated on humans existing and having behavior, most of the rest of psychology is predicated on humans existing and having cognition, whether or not that cognition is a property of the physical body.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  Do we have some form of map between emotions and soma ? I read a few things about hormone cascade and neurological noise when traumatized. But that's not very precise.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Emotional stress is biological stress unless you believe in an extreme form of cartesian dualism incompatible with modern understanding of physiology. Not necessarily. You can believe in the "modern understanding of physiology" and still think that "Emotional stress" is a "thinking" process that does not affect biological physiology. It's not necessary that every emotion or brain process manifests in any other way aside from brain synapses firing and so on (e.g. that it affects the bodily operations in some other way). So, it's not an either-or, but 3 options: 1) cartesian dualism (emotion and biology are two different spheres, soul independent of the body etc) 2) emotional stress triggers biological stress 3) emotional stress remains a brain process and doesn't trigger biological stress And the case is probably sometimes (2) and sometimes (3).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
BOOSTERHIDROGEN 7y ago
At what page red light therapy ?
internet_user 7y ago
What gives you the impression medical profession doesn't do anything with it? Sapolsky (h-index 109) was McEwen's student, probably one of his most prominent students, and has continued to work on stress, as did his other students. Sapolsky alone made enormous contributions to our understanding and treatment of stress and stress-related disorders.
- tomhoward 7y ago
  How often do you hear of a case where a doctor, upon establishing that a patient has a debilitating illness that doesn’t respond to conventional medical treatment, recommend that they undertake deep emotional development or trauma healing work? I can tell you from personal experience, it doesn’t happen. Patients are left to figure this out for themselves, and usually don’t as the idea is considered so wacky.
  - internet_user 7y ago
    Are you suggesting physicians are uncomfortable treating somatization disorders or something? Your comment makes a lot of assumptions: 1) physician is qualified and competent. 2) diagnosis is correct. 3) treatment is optimal. Those are all big assumptions. Misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment are very, very common. "Placebo" prescriptions are common. Something like 25% of presentations at primary care are for medically unexplained symptoms. However, any half-decent physician will attempt to address obvious psychopathology, if present. I don't believe it is commonly being ignored. I don't know your case specifics, but in presence of objective abnormalities - there is obviously going to be hesitation to diagnose somatoform.
    - kranner 7y ago
      > I don't know your case specifics, but in presence of objective abnormalities - there is obviously going to be hesitation to diagnose somatoform. From the HN Guidelines: > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
  - 7y ago
tchvil 7y ago
When you workout, your stress level increase. And your body somehow deteriorate, but with some rest adapt as the result of the training. And you improve. Then you can have other stresses coming from life events, work, kids, travel, partner,... issues. If you monitor your stress with Heart Rate Variability, you can see them all having a bad effect. It could be interesting to check if the red light could help recover faster.
- rzzzt 7y ago
  The "positive" kind has another name, eustress, for better distinction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustress
tsukurimashou 7y ago
It can be dangerous to look at it this way, just like looking at environmental / physical aspects of someone and his mental state, both affect each other. And it is the same with "emotional stress" and biological stress" one can cause another and vise versa.

danharaj 7y ago

Emotional stress is biological stress unless you believe in an extreme form of cartesian dualism incompatible with modern understanding of physiology.

copperx 7y ago
Sure, it's atoms all the way down; however, it is still important to make a distinction. Biological stress can be beneficial for our well being, while emotional stress (fight or flight response) has mostly deleterious effects.
- internet_user 7y ago
  You could have hormetic effects from psychological stressors as well. They really are identical on a certain level.
tomhoward 7y ago
I agree with you and I’d guess your parent commenter would too. Yet, many people who consider themselves to be rational and scientifically-minded, and who reject dualism, scoff at the notion that physiological illness can be caused/exacerbated by emotional stress. Try this out some time: suggest that an illness like chronic fatigue syndrome or general autoimmune illness is at least somewhat linked to emotional stress and/or trauma, and see what kinds of reactions you get (or go and look at the discussions about this topic in CFS communities).
- internet_user 7y ago
  Amazing how conversations swing from one side of extreme to another in just two comments. What's next, are you going to suggest basilar skull fractures are somewhat linked to emotional stress? The responses you'd get would likely be due to PTSD induced by interacting with the very rational and scientifically-minded profit-maximizing medical industry, and/or incompetent physicians unable to provide an effective relief for the underlying condition. Try out this some time: try to reduce stigma around various disorders instead of suggesting running nonconsensual unethical experiments, bordering on sociopathy, on those suffering from difficult to treat disorders.
  - tomhoward 7y ago
    > What's next, are you going to suggest basilar skull fractures are somewhat linked to emotional stress? If you want to discuss this topic in good faith you should edit your comment to remove this appeal to ridicule. I don't know what you think I'm advocating that motivates the bilious accusations in the rest of your comment. From what I can tell: - We seem to agree that people suffering chronic, difficult-to-treat illnesses have it extremely tough, and it would be ideal if they didn't (I know this from personal experience) - We also seem to agree that the profit motive creates perverse incentives in medical research and treatment. Outside of that, your comment seems to be just another example of the very phenomenon I was pointing out. To be clear: I've experienced difficult-to-treat illness that seems to be autoimmune-related for much of my life. I'm now almost completely well, having undertaken a variety of treatments including deep emotional/trauma healing work over the past 8+ years. There is no mainstream physician, of any supposed level of competence, who would have recommended the approach that has enabled me to achieve the level of health I've now reached. There are notable exceptions – Gabor Maté and Bruce Lipton being the most prominent – yet neither are taken seriously by the scientific/medical mainstream, despite both having advanced mainstream medical credentials.
colechristensen 7y ago
A wide gulf exists between consciousness and neurons. There are many easy abstractions to make between the two and putting the stress from starvation and the stress from grieving a parent's death in the same bucket is pointlessly pedantic.
dntbnmpls 7y ago
I agree with you, but there is an entire field ( psychology ) predicated on the mind and brain duality. So perhaps they might view some or all emotional stress as "mental/psychological" stress not entirely tied to biological stress.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > but there is an entire field ( psychology ) predicated on the mind and brain duality. No, psychology isn't predicated on mind/body duality. Much of it is arguably compatible with mind/body duality simply because it doesn't address physical root causes but only higher-level phenomena, but going beyond that to say that it is predicated on mind/body duality is like saying that Computer Science, because it deals with abstract computation and mostly not the underlying physical mechanisms (left to the separate field of computer engineering) is predicated on computation/processor duality.
  - dntbnmpls 7y ago
    > No, psychology isn't predicated on mind/body duality. Can you tell me how psychology exists without the mind? > Much of it is arguably compatible with mind/body duality simply because it doesn't address physical root So it is predicated on the mind/brain. > because it deals with abstract computation and mostly not the underlying physical mechanisms (left to the separate field of computer engineering) is predicated on computation/processor duality Your analogy seems off and you assertion contradicts itself. Computer science is a math. It lives in the world of "forms". Computer science exists without the processor. It existed before the processor. Lambda calculus and the turing machine existed before the processor. Just like arithmetic existed before calculators. Are you saying the mind exists without the brain? The mind existed before the brain? So aren't we back to square one - the mind/brain duality? If psychology isn't predicated on mind/brain duality, what is it predicated on?
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Can you tell me how psychology exists without the mind? It doesn't (well, except maybe behavioral psychology, which arguably could) exist without the mind. It just doesn't care one way or another about whether the mind is a direct product of the physical body or not. “Mind/body” duality isn't just “the mind exist”, but “the mind is at least in part not a property of the body”. > If psychology isn't predicated on mind/brain duality, what is it predicated on? Depends what particular branch. Behavioral psychology is predicated on humans existing and having behavior, most of the rest of psychology is predicated on humans existing and having cognition, whether or not that cognition is a property of the physical body.
agumonkey 7y ago
Do we have some form of map between emotions and soma ? I read a few things about hormone cascade and neurological noise when traumatized. But that's not very precise.
coldtea 7y ago
>Emotional stress is biological stress unless you believe in an extreme form of cartesian dualism incompatible with modern understanding of physiology. Not necessarily. You can believe in the "modern understanding of physiology" and still think that "Emotional stress" is a "thinking" process that does not affect biological physiology. It's not necessary that every emotion or brain process manifests in any other way aside from brain synapses firing and so on (e.g. that it affects the bodily operations in some other way). So, it's not an either-or, but 3 options: 1) cartesian dualism (emotion and biology are two different spheres, soul independent of the body etc) 2) emotional stress triggers biological stress 3) emotional stress remains a brain process and doesn't trigger biological stress And the case is probably sometimes (2) and sometimes (3).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

BOOSTERHIDROGEN 7y ago

At what page red light therapy ?

internet_user 7y ago

What gives you the impression medical profession doesn't do anything with it? Sapolsky (h-index 109) was McEwen's student, probably one of his most prominent students, and has continued to work on stress, as did his other students. Sapolsky alone made enormous contributions to our understanding and treatment of stress and stress-related disorders.

tomhoward 7y ago
How often do you hear of a case where a doctor, upon establishing that a patient has a debilitating illness that doesn’t respond to conventional medical treatment, recommend that they undertake deep emotional development or trauma healing work? I can tell you from personal experience, it doesn’t happen. Patients are left to figure this out for themselves, and usually don’t as the idea is considered so wacky.
- internet_user 7y ago
  Are you suggesting physicians are uncomfortable treating somatization disorders or something? Your comment makes a lot of assumptions: 1) physician is qualified and competent. 2) diagnosis is correct. 3) treatment is optimal. Those are all big assumptions. Misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment are very, very common. "Placebo" prescriptions are common. Something like 25% of presentations at primary care are for medically unexplained symptoms. However, any half-decent physician will attempt to address obvious psychopathology, if present. I don't believe it is commonly being ignored. I don't know your case specifics, but in presence of objective abnormalities - there is obviously going to be hesitation to diagnose somatoform.
  - kranner 7y ago
    > I don't know your case specifics, but in presence of objective abnormalities - there is obviously going to be hesitation to diagnose somatoform. From the HN Guidelines: > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
- 7y ago

tchvil 7y ago

When you workout, your stress level increase. And your body somehow deteriorate, but with some rest adapt as the result of the training. And you improve. Then you can have other stresses coming from life events, work, kids, travel, partner,... issues. If you monitor your stress with Heart Rate Variability, you can see them all having a bad effect. It could be interesting to check if the red light could help recover faster.

rzzzt 7y ago
The "positive" kind has another name, eustress, for better distinction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustress

tsukurimashou 7y ago

It can be dangerous to look at it this way, just like looking at environmental / physical aspects of someone and his mental state, both affect each other. And it is the same with "emotional stress" and biological stress" one can cause another and vise versa.