Oxytocin: The Impact Of Stress On The Human Body

Kelly McGonigal felt she was doing something wrong by turning stress into the enemy. As a health psychologist her job was to help people be happier and healthier. But was afraid that what she had been teaching for the past years was doing more harm than good. For the last 10 years she told people that stress makes them sick because it increases the risk of getting sick from a common cold to cardiovascular disease. But a study that tracked 30,000 adults in the United States for eight years changed her mind about stress. The study showed that, People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous years had a 43 percent increased risk of dying, but only if they believed that stress was bad for their health. On the other hand people who experienced

Every time we stress our pituitary gland pumps out oxytocin as a stress response. Oxytocin is a neurohormone that improves our brain 's social instincts, and makes us do things that strength relationships, and crave physical contact with friends and family. Enhances our empathy, making us more compassionate and caring. When oxytocin is released motivate us to look for support, and to be surrounded by people who loves us and care about us when we go through hard times. Moreover oxytocin acts on our brain, and our body too. One of its main roles is to protect our cardiovascular system from the effects of stress. Oxytocin strengthens our heart because is a natural anti inflammatory that helps our blood vessels stay relaxed during stress. Also helps our heart cells to regenerate and heal from any damage caused by stress. Oxytocin benefits are enhanced by social contact and social support. So whenever we are under stress, but we look for support or we help someone, our brain releases this hormone. Is impressive how stress response has a built-in mechanism that help us to adapt to stress, and that mechanism doesn’t cost a thing because is human

Choosing to connect with others under stress makes us stronger. Stress can help us to be more compassionate, and to find joy and meaning in connecting with others. And when our physical beat fast, think that is working hard to give us strength and energy not to harm. Choosing to view stress in this way, will help us to trust ourselves to handle life 's challenges, and to remember that we don 't have to face them alone.

While I was watching the video I thought about chapter 14. Where we learned about the causes of stress which are called stressors: traumatic events, significant life changes, daily hassles, and situations in which people are exposed to challenging and unpleasant events, and situations that require to make changes in their lives such us a divorce or moving to a new house. The level of stress depends on the type of stressor that can be acute or chronic. Also thought about our body’s physiological reactions to stress. Walter Cannon, an American physiologist called them fight-or-flight response.

Also about how our pituitary gland pumps out oxytocin when we stress, a neurohormone that motivates us to look for support. Chapter 14.4 said social support is one of the coping styles we use to cope with stress, besides making our relationships with others stronger, social support also influence our immune functioning, and promotes healthy