Robert Sapolsky's Stress: Portrait Of A Killer

During my viewing of Stress: Portrait of a Killer, I was astonished by how social ranking in one’s community/world, specifically within baboons, can have such a tremendous impact on stress in a positive or negative manner. I have read a lot of literature about the impact of stress on humans, but the research conducted by Robert Sapolsky on baboons citing how aggressive, dominant males within a baboon troop showed lower stress levels compared to submissive and lower social ranking baboons, who showed considerable increases in their level of stress, was truly amazing. If there is one thing that, prior to this video, that I nor the public were aware of about stress would be the wide-ranging effects high stress levels can have on not only the body

but also the brain. The documentary touched on many of the effects that stress, especially chronic stress, can have the body and brain. Numerous studies have also documented the effects chronic stress can have the brain, such as a reduction in numerous brain structures, altering neuronal plasticity due to dendritic atrophy and a decrease in spine density, a reduction in gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, among other detrimental effects (Mariotti, 2015).

While the public is aware of some of the basic effects that stress can have through educational and medical exposure, but there is still plenty of information that the general population is missing. Part of the reasoning for why the general population may not have wide spread knowledge concerning stress and its fatal effects is the lack of attention stress is given in educational and medical settings, medical professionals for many people across the world don’t educate and check their patients on the stress they may be experiencing, schools also do a poor job of educating their students on the topic of stress and essentially ignore students who may be undergoing tremendous amounts of stress from school, extracurricular activities within or outside of school, issues at home or with friends, etc. Another issue concerning the lack of knowledge about stress among the general population is the idea that communicating about stress with family, friends, health professionals is

taboo. Many people in society who undergo stress, major or minor, during any period figure that the best way to deal with stress is to put their head down and figure it out themselves. While every episode of stress doesn’t require an intervention, there is documented evidence that just communicating with someone or with a group of people proves to be beneficial when dealing with stress, which is why it’s so important to encourage conversation amongst family members, friends, groups, medical professionals to understand that stress doesn’t have to be a lonely endeavor.
As mentioned previously, stress has various detrimental effects on physical and mental health. Stress has been linked to “cardiovascular dysfunctions, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune syndromes and mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety disorders” (Mariotti, 2015, p. 2). There are other studies that have suggested that persons who are under “high stress are less likely to survive cardiac events,” it has also been shown that stress can modify the immune system and persons experiencing high levels of stress are more likely to report being ill (Stults-Kolehmainen & Sinha, 2014). Every case of stress is significantly different from one another, an individual may be experiencing high levels of stress due to his/her occupation while another individual may be experiencing high levels of stress due to academic issues at school. Due to these massive differences, it would be smart to treat every case in a specific manner that is suitable to that individual. Biofeedback has been proven to be a useful strategy, it has been proven to “decrease heart rate and respiratory rate, increase heart rate variability and improve pulmonary peak flows” (Franke, 2014, p. 396). In a study that contained 60 graduate students in public health nursing, participants were assigned to a control group or a biofeedback intervention group. Over a 4-week period, participants in the biofeedback intervention group had shown a significant reduction in levels of stress, anxiety, and depression while participants in the control group had actually shown increased levels of stress, anxiety, and depression (Ratanasiripong, Kaweboonchoo, Ratanasiripong, Hanklang, & Chumchai, 2015). Another study that used biofeedback training as a treatment for stress also reported significant improvements in the intervention group, it was discovered that the intervention group “had significantly increased regional gray matter (GM) volume in the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex” (Kotozaki et al., 2014, p. 566). The reason that increased gray matter volume is key is because gray matter regions are linked to the stress response, and these regions are highly responsive to the effects of stress (Kotozaki et al., 2014). Another effective treatment for stress is community-based interventions, they have been proven to be extremely effective, specifically for children suffering from stress. Examples of community-based interventions that could prove beneficial include, outreach programs and volunteer groups. A major reason why community-based intervention has been effective is that it spurs positive environmental changes, involving individuals in programs that encourage reaching out to their communities can help build healthy and beneficial relationships with people within their community, along with the benefits of helping and improving your community can improve life outcomes (Franke, 2014). A major study that utilized a community-based stress management intervention for black breast cancer survivors found intriguing results, many of the participants in both conditions found significant improvements in areas such as, overall quality of life, intrusive thoughts, depressive symptoms, and stress levels (Lechner et al., 2014). What the researchers found interesting was that for many of the participants this was their initial opportunity to be in a group with other black breast cancer survivors, many of the participants “reported a strong healing effect of coming together as a sisterhood of black women” (Lechner et al., 2014, p. 321). The study also attributed a high retention rate to the effects of the participants being able to discuss the hardships, emotions, the highs, and lows, etc. of being a survivor of breast cancer which encouraged the participants to continue their involvement in the study. These results is an immense reason why community-based programs are gaining support in their use for not only stress, but a multitude of other treatment programs for other mental and physical health issues. With an involvement of other persons from the community, or other persons suffering from similar mental and physical issues, treatment programs can instantaneously become more effective allowing participants to essentially “let their guard down” and truly embrace the program which will eliminate the apprehension or stress that comes with participating in a new, unfamiliar program.
While there are numerous negative effects of stress on the brain and body, in cases of minor stress it can be beneficial. The term hormesis, which is the exposure to minor or moderate stress in early life helps build a stronger resistance to stress in later life (Monaghan & Haussmann, 2015). While exposure to excessive stress, for example the Dutch Hunger Winter that was discussed in the documentary, especially in early life has been proven to be detrimental in development. In my opinion, excessive stress is universally a negative. For example, in an experiment on zebra finches the chicks were given a daily dose of corticosterone between 12 and 28 days after birth, these doses resulted in an increase in reactivity in the HPA axis. The postnatal exposure to this stressor showed no effects on the life of the finches from the period they were chicks to young adults, the effects of the stressor did end up showing themselves in a “faster rate of ageing and substantially reduced longevity” (Monaghan & Haussmann, 2015, p. 645). While early life stressors can realistically be a positive, in that it allows for individuals later in life to build hardiness towards the effects of stress and lead to a healthier future in being able to properly cope with the daily minor stresses of life. The effects of excessive stress prenatally and postnatally have been scientifically documented repeatedly as harmful and debilitating in early life and even more so in later life. (WORD COUNT: 1342)