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Stress and Changes in Behavior
Stress has been mostly studied in the context of coronary heart disease (CHD). However, there are studies exploring links between diseases like cancer, diabetes, and recovery from surgery. Research exploring the links between stress and CHD highlights the impact of stress on the classic risk factors for CHD, namely raised blood cholesterol, raised blood pressure, and smoking. These risk factors are strongly influenced by behavior and reflect the behavioral pathway between stress and illness (Krantz et al. 1981). In line with this, some research has examined the effect of stress on specific health-related behaviors (Stress And Changes In Behavior)
LIST OF ACRONYMS FROM THE HEALTH AND CLIMATE CHANGE FIELD
Stress And Changes In Behavior
Smoking
Smoking has been consistently linked to a range of illnesses including lung cancer and coronary heart disease. Research suggests a link between stress and smoking behavior in terms of smoking initiation, relapse and the amount smoked. Stress And Changes In Behavior
Wills (1985) argued that smoking initiation in adolescents was associated with the amount of stress in their lives. In addition, there has been some support for the prediction that children who experience the stressor of changing schools may be more likely to start smoking than those who stay at a similar college throughout their secondary education (Santi et al. 1991). Stress And Changes In Behavior
In terms of relapse, Lichtenstein et al. (1986) and Carey et al. (1993) according to that individual who expertise high levels of stress are additional likely to start out smoking once more after a period of abstinence than those who expertise less stress. research also indicates that enhanced smoking could also be effective at reducing stress. In an experimental study, Perkins et al. (1992) exposed smokers to either a stressful or a non-stressful P.C task and asked the subjects to smoke a cigarette or sham smoke an unlit cigarette. The results showed that in spite of whether the smokers smoked or not, all subjects according to an enhanced want to smoke in stressful conditions. Stress And Changes In Behavior
However, this desire was less in those smokers who were really allowed to smoke. This suggests that stress causes an increased urge for a cigarette, which can be modified by smoking. In a lot of realistic studies, smokers were asked to attend a stressful social scenario and were taught either to smoke or to not smoke. Those that couldn’t smoke reported the occasion as a lot of socially stressful than those that might smoke (Gilbert and Spielberger 1987). Similarly, Metcalfe et al. (2003) used the Reeder Stress Inventory to relate stress to health behaviors and concluded that higher levels of stress were associated with smoking more cigarettes. Stress And Changes In Behavior
This association was additionally found in one massive scale study of over 6000 Scottish men and girls which showed that higher levels of perceived stress were connected to smoking more (Heslop et al. 2001). Stress And Changes In Behavior
Alcohol
High alcohol intake has been linked to illnesses such as coronary heart disease, cancer, and liver disease. Research has additionally examined the link between stress and alcohol consumption. Several authors have recommended that job stress, specifically, may promote alcohol use (e.g. Herold and Conlon 1981; Gupta and Jenkins 1984). The tension reduction theory suggests that people drink alcohol for its tension-reducing properties (Cappell and Greeley 1987). Stress And Changes In Behavior
Tension refers to states such as fear, anxiety, depression, and distress. Therefore according to this model, negative moods are the internal stressors, or the consequence of an external stressor, which causes alcohol consumption due to the expected outcome of the alcohol. For example, if a person feels tense or anxious (their internal state) as a result of an exam (the external stressor) and believes that alcohol will scale back this tension (the expected outcome), they’ll drink alcohol to enhance their mood. Stress And Changes In Behavior
This theory has been supported by some evidence of the relationship between negative mood and drinking behavior (Violanti et al. 1983) suggesting that individuals are a lot of likely to drink once they are feeling depressed or anxious Similarly, both Metcalfe et al. (2003) and Heslop et al. (2001) reported an association between perceived stress and drinking a lot of alcohol (if a drinker). Furthermore, it’s been recommended that medical students’ fashion and the prevalence of downside drinking may be associated with the stress they expertise (Wolf and Kissling 1984).
In one study, this theory was tested experimentally and the health-related behaviors of medical students were evaluated both before and during a stressful examination period. The results showed that the students reported a deterioration in mood in terms of anxiety and depression and changes in their behavior in terms of decreases in exercise and food intake (Ogden and Mtandabari 1997). However, alcohol consumption also went down. The authors concluded that acute exposure to stress resulted in negative changes in those behaviors that had only a minimal influence on the students’ ability to perform satisfactorily. Obviously, chronic stress may have more damaging effects on longer-term changes in behavior. Stress And Changes In Behavior
Effects of Stress on Physiological Health
Eating
Diet can influence health either through changes in weight or via the over or below consumption of specific dietary parts. Greeno and Wing (1994) projected two hypotheses regarding the link between stress and eating:
- The general effect model, predicts that stress changes food intake generally;
- the individual difference model, which predicts that stress only causes changes in eating in vulnerable groups of individuals.
Most analysis has targeted the individual distinction model and has examined whether either naturally occurring stress or laboratory-induced stress causes changes in intake in specific people. For example, Michaud et al. 1990) reported that exam stress was related to an increase in eating in girls but not in boys, Baucom and Aiken (1981) reported that stress increased eating in both the overweight and dieters and Cools et al. (1992) reported that stress was related to eating in dieters only.
Therefore, gender, weight, and levels of dieting seem to be important predictors of a link between stress and eating. However, the research is not always consistent with this suggestion. For example, Conner et al. (1999) examined the link between daily hassles and snacking in 60 students who completed diaries of their snacking and hassles for seven consecutive days.
Their results showed a direct association between increased daily hassles and increased snacking but showed no differences according to either gender or dieting. Such inconsistencies in the literature have been described by Stone and Brownell (1994) as the ‘stress eating paradox’ to describe how at times stress causes overeating and in others, it causes undereating without any clear pattern emerging. Stress And Changes In Behavior
Accidents
Accidents are very common and rarely studied as the cause of injury or mortality. Research has also examined the effects of stress on accidents and correlational research suggests that individuals who experience high levels of stress show a greater tendency to perform behaviors that increase their chances of becoming injured (Wiebe and McCallum 1986). Further, Johnson (1986) has also suggested that stress increases accidents at home, at work, and in the car. (Stress And Changes In Behavior)
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