Introduction:The human experience of psychological stress, which is influenced by socio cultural and genetic factors, has been an important concept in understanding health and disease. Our understanding of the organic aspects of the experiencing of stress by the brain and central nervous system has greatly increased. For example, the corticotropin releasing factor/paraventricular nucleas in the hypothalamus and the locus cereleus-norepinephrine nervous system in the brainstem have been identified as divisions of the central nervous system that play a central role in the stress response.( Arbetter, S. (2002)) Furthermore, many of the endocrinological factors that result from the stressed central nervous system have been elucidated. Enough immunological changes (as a result of the endocrinological alterations), most of which are immunosuppressive, have been elicited to propose a biomedical model of the effects of psychological stress on mental and physical health.
The medical literature and experience of the past many years have supported the tenet that the psychological state of a person affects his feelings of well-being and therefore may affect his mode of presentation to and treatment by the medical system. We and other physicians have noted that a person's psychological state and the type and degree of psychological stress he may be undergoing affect his feelings of well-being and daily functioning. However, it has been less clear until the last several decades whether a person's stress response alters biochemical and physiological factors rendering him more susceptible to organic disease. We believe that evidence from the fields of psychoneuroendocrinology and psychoneuroimmunology is accumulating to lend affirmative support to this concept.( Arbetter, S. (2002))
Stress in humans:The human stress response may be viewed from several levels: the sociocultural level, the individual's psychological response (affecting the way the person presents to the physician), the biochemical response of the brain and central nervous system, the resulting endocronological response, and the response at the level of the human immune system (and, perhaps, concomitantly at the tissue level).........................
