OMKAR KATE
INTRODUCTION
Tim is a 55 years old man, who worked in a superstore for last 35 years. He is working at a very low salary since the start of job. He has 3 children, 2 sons and a girl. 2 of his children got married. All of them are well educated, but Tim is still paying for their student loans.
So he is currently under debt. He has to look after his 83 mother and his wife. He is also suffering from acute knee pains and sometimes has trouble breathing. After showing to the doctor, he said that there are no signs of such symptoms on his body, but it is because of any stress. He has also attempted suicide once but he was saved by his wife.
His face has a lot of wrinkles and he looks like a person of 70 years of age. So in the above case, the concept of stress plus its effects on age is introduced. Dr. Has Selye who is also known as the “father of stress” defined stress as,” Non-specific response of the body to any demand for change” Tim went through a lot of changes in his entire life and he might not have proper amount of resources to handle those changes.
And because of that, his body showed many changes in order to adapt to those external changes. Lazarus et al said, “stress occurs when the perceived demands of the external situations is beyond their capacity.” And the term “chronic” is medicine to refer to any condition that persists over time or is frequently recurring, chronic stress can be said as the stress that persists for a long amount of time. Tim had to look after his mother and his wife as well as pay the student loans of his children with a very low salary.
And he was experiencing this situation for a long time with a constant reminder of all these situations or stressors (something with a potential to cause or elicit stress). Dr. DeLongs et al consider the routine stressful events to be very crucial than the major life events that occur infrequently. With these stressors, he is also undergoing ageing which is very crucial when considering any psychological study.
Aging is said to be the process of getting older. In technical terms, ageing is the natural process of biological, physiological, psychological, behavioral growth and changes in organisms. A person throughout his/her life undergoes the process of ageing. There are mainly 4 stages in one’s life. These are infancy, adolescence, adulthood, late adulthood. Irrespective of their age, humans experience various stressors in their life ever since birth.
Every individual has a variety of stressors that they may react to in various ways. One effect of stress on ageing is the faster ageing. In Tim’s case, due to stress his face was wrinkled and he appeared older than his stated and he also started receiving bodily symptoms which were actually not present. The other effects of ageing on stress and the reverse effects of stress on ageing are explained in the later part of the essay.
EFFECTS OF STRESS ON AGING
It is found after a lot of research by the researchers that stress has a lot of effect on aging, and vice-versa. The stress induces a lot of bodily changes in humans there are many examples of stress affecting the bodily reactions. In the case discussed above, about Tim, constant stress for over a long time made his body look older than he actually should be.
Many of such effects will be discussed in this paragraph. There are different types of chronic stressors in human life and all these types of stressors, if not handled, can cause immense damage to human body. The types of stressors for different age group as shown in the above paragraph can elicit negative bodily reactions which can speed up aging or form some deformities in the process of aging. The most common form of stress in adults is work stress.
A study conducted by Ahola et al, aimed to know the effects of stress on aging. The working population, prone to chronic stress was studied along with the non-working population. It was found that the DNA leukocyte telomeres of the working population were comparatively shorter than the non-working population. Telomeres are very crucial for the working of DNA cells.
It is also important to note that telomeres shortening can result to Alzheimer, Parkinson’s disease or other cardiovascular disorders. And shortening of telomeres also speeds up the process of aging. This shows that chronic stress is very harmful for humans.
However, this study is almost 8 years old. Newer research should be conducted in this field. Another study conducted by Cohella et al, studied the effect of chronic stress on different age groups of rats. The result is shocking and should be noted by everyone, the adolescent age group was not able to handle the chronic stress properly compared to the adults.
And it was also seen that the younger groups were also not able to cope up with stress in later life when exposed to chronic stress once. This shows that children are vulnerable to stress and they should not be exposed to chronic stressors to ensure better life later on. Due to many physical changes in the body like increased heart rate, muscle contractions etc… the body needs some time or ways to cope up with the stress. Repeated exposure to stressors or chronic stress can result to permanent damage to the organs like ears, eyes, brain, muscles.
In the case of Tim, the repeated exposure of stress caused some damage to his brain or organs and he started complaining about the symptoms which were not physically present. His constant exposure to stress started altering his brain or body functioning. Stress is also tiresome for mental health.
In a study conducted by Dr. Edison of University of Emory on stress in the process of aging on mice, adolescents with constant psychological stress showed increase in peripheral inflammation and it also resulted in alteration of neuroinflammation in adulthood. They also concluded that constant stress in adolescence can cause major changes in social behavior of the adolescent and females are more prone to this condition in comparison with males.
This shows how vulnerable constant stress can be on human body. An optimum amount of stress is very good for the proper functioning of the body, a lesser or higher amount can affect the body and stress for a long period of time would cause long term bodily effect. The process of aging also cause stress in adults especially the geriatric generation. As people get old, there are many physical changes in the geriatric generation like weakening of muscles, decreasing in eye sight, weakening of bones, inability to remember memories, whitening of hair and wrinkles.
Due to certain changes in the physiology, their ability to cope up with stress also reduces. And prolonged or chronic stress can also cause depression or death in the geriatric generation. For example, a man reaches old age and as per the law of nature, his muscles, including his heart, starts to weaken. Due to the constant stress or chronic stress and its physiological strains like heart pumping rapidly, muscles tension etc. the body tries to balance the changes and this process is known as allostasis.
This constant process creates a load on the body, which is known as allostatic load. Allostatic load is a multiple biomarker measure of physiological ‘wear and tear’ that has shown some promise as marker of overall physiological health. The body at the older age cannot handle much of the load If the allostatic load is not uplifted, it can result to death. Thus, chronic stress especially at the geriatric age is very harmful.
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