4 ms·

This is a very important story, which I heard on the radio while driving yesterday. Most of what we think we know about stress and its effects on health, and es

This is a very important story, which I heard on the radio while driving yesterday. Most of what we think we know about stress and its effects on health, and especially about "Type A personality" and health, is skewed by how the research programs were developed in the 1950s through the 1970s. Various forms of adverse environmental influences that can be categorized as "stress" do have general health effects, but not all stress is bad at all levels of stress, and sometimes stress co-occurs with other influences on health that are actually more important than stress itself. A free article on the Pub Med Central website, "The 'Father of Stress' Meets 'Big Tobacco': Hans Selye and the Tobacco Industry," Am J Public Health. 2011 March; 101(3): 411–418. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3036703/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3036703/ doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2009.177634 tells more of the background discovered by health researchers digging into the trove of tobacco industry documents that were disclosed as part of the tobacco industry settlement with state governments in 1998.

PaulHoule 12y ago
To avoid the politics, something that turned up in later research is that the thing that correlates to bad outcomes (i.e. heart disease) is hostility more than ambition.
a8da6b0c91d 12y ago
Selye uses the term "stress" with a specific meaning different from the popular conception (he pretty much coined the term as a physiological concept, but it has been co-opted). In his work "stress" is energy demands in excess of the organism's ability to deliver without compromising structure. By energy he means real joules and ATP, not some amorphous psychological reserve. When people talk about "good stress" and "bad stress" it kinda indicates they don't get the context. What Selye found was that under his definition of stress there is no "good stress." All episodes of stress accumulate indelibly on the organism as aging. If an activity does not exceed the energy capacity of the organism then it's not stress.

PaulHoule 12y ago

To avoid the politics, something that turned up in later research is that the thing that correlates to bad outcomes (i.e. heart disease) is hostility more than ambition.

a8da6b0c91d 12y ago

Selye uses the term "stress" with a specific meaning different from the popular conception (he pretty much coined the term as a physiological concept, but it has been co-opted). In his work "stress" is energy demands in excess of the organism's ability to deliver without compromising structure. By energy he means real joules and ATP, not some amorphous psychological reserve. When people talk about "good stress" and "bad stress" it kinda indicates they don't get the context. What Selye found was that under his definition of stress there is no "good stress." All episodes of stress accumulate indelibly on the organism as aging. If an activity does not exceed the energy capacity of the organism then it's not stress.