Stress as a Social Determinant of Health

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A) Can stress ever be a positive social determinant of health?

Stress a term used to describe the human response to pressure when faced with challenges or even dangerous situations, resulting in an increase in our energy and alertness, a prolonged exposure to stressful stimuli can lead to harmful effect on health, a functional definition of stress may be hard to establish, the research of stress probably started with Selye Hans (1956) using the term “stress” in his book “the stress of life” referring to stress as the unpleasant environmental events and the physiological reaction toward it, examining the effect of anxious but different physical and emotional stimuli on laboratory animals, suggesting that persistence exposure to stress caused these animals to develop diseases similar to those seen in humans.

The Solid facts document of the World Health Organization (2003) identifies stress as a powerful social determinants of health, indicating the harmful effect of the prolonged hormonal, physiological response to stressful stimuli, on the cardiovascular and immune systems of the human body.

Eustress

When Selye first defined stress he has carefully distinguished between the stressors and the physiological and emotional reaction toward the stress (stress reaction), differentiating between the cause and consequence, the term eustress, was developed by Selye to describe the positive and healthy cognitive response to stress, providing the humans with the drive and motivation to achieve tasks and accomplish goals, when the challenge is addressed, eustress is correlated with positive life satisfaction and well-being.

Eustress is how stress can have a positive impact on our health and well-being, by overcoming the stressor and...

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...rs, (2006). Work stress in the etiology of coronary heart disease a meta-analysis. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 32(6), 431--442.
Lupien, S., McEwen, B., Gunnar, M., & Heim, C. (2009). Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behavior and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 434--445.

McLeod, S. A. (2010). Stress, Illness and the Immune System. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/stress-immune.html

Selye, H. (1956). The stress of life (1st ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Shonkoff, J., Garner, A., Siegel, B., Dobbins, M., Earls, M., McGuinn, L., Pascoe, J., Wood, D. and others, (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), pp.232--24

Wilkinson, R. and Marmot, M. (2003). The solid facts. 2nd ed. Copenhagen: World Health Organisation, Regional Office for Europe.

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