What is stress

Lately the notion “stress” became very popular – not without reason the past 20th century was called the century of stress. There is 21st century now but stress, knowing no boundaries, with ease stepped into a new millennium and goes on strengthening its positions.

Everyone experienced it, all say about it but very few ones asked a question, what stress is?

Dictionaries and encyclopedias give the following answers to this question:

Stress - is a state of tension which a person feels as affected by strong influences

Stress – is a non-specific protective response of organism in answer to unfavorable changes of environment.

Definitions given above are laconic and simple, but to understand what stress is you shouldn’t look at dictionaries - to look around is enough. Stress – is all that surrounds us. Stress is our life. In the world of Pepsi and computers we can not live out of this state. It breaks in our life from the very morning, together with the wake-up call, and then…Then all happens by one and the same scenario – jamming (for automobilists), morning crowding in transport ( for others), work, call to the boss, problems with children, quarrels with relatives, “not that sort of” sex, bad sleep. “And such trash happens every day”.

Is it possible to live without stress? The science affirms that no. Life hates constancy and stability, and of course it is life –that is the main source of stress. That is why only death totally saves a person from stress

Stress revelation

The notion “stress” came into existence comparatively recently – in 1936 in an easy state of mind of the scientist, Nobel laureate Hans Selye. Of course stress existed before as well – but oxygen also was opened only in 17th century, but still and all people breathed with something before it. Selye took a technical term “stress” meaning “tension”, “strain”, “pressure” from the science about resistance of materials and used it in relation to a person. To be more exact, at first not to a person but to ordinary laboratory rats which he made experiments with at that time.
 

When Selye prosected rats he found out pathologic changes in their internals. When Selye opened cages rats often run away and then rushed around the whole laboratory for a long time saving themselves from their torturer. Considerable amount of time passed before he caught them and put them on place. According to Selye, the process of escape and capture was the reason of discovered pathologic changes.

Then Selye acted very badly with rats and the laboratory started to remind inquisition torture chambers, though Selye himself called all this just a “special creation of stress situations”. The fantasy of stress creator knew no boundaries. Sometimes he suddenly supplied current to the cage and then rats jumped into the air, sometimes he swathed them for them not to be able to move, sometimes he made them to swim for a long time or exposed to loud sounds. Then Selye, having shown mercy, started to warn rats about upcoming supply of current with a call which, of course, lowered stress level because most of the time rats could not fear electric shock.

After all this rats got under scalpel of researcher and they had the same pathologic changes. This led Selye to the following conclusion: it has no difference which influence rats were affected by – prosection had to show one and the same pathology. Ulcer of stomach turned out to be dominant character of stress.
Consequently, stress was determined as “non-specific reaction of organism to external influence”.

In other words, Selye made a conclusion that the reason of pathologic changes is not external influence itself (electric shock, swathe or noise) but the reaction of rat’s organism to these influences.