On stress

 We are living in fascinating times. All over the planet people are dependent on their smart telephones. With our computers we are able to find friends, or loose money to someone unknown on the other side of the earth. Humans have left their footprints on the moon and we can look att pictures from Mars. With space based telescopes we believe that we  can see the utmost borders of the universe and in hours we travel distances which only two hundred years ago took months. All this has man made possible. But at the same time we don’t understand better than to expose our planet, its nature and its living creatures, to an exploitation on a scale never seen before.

This will of course have consequences for us and for nature, that is unavoidable. Possibly as dramatic climate changes. But most certain also as lack of nutrition, clean water and clean air for many, lack of rest and peace and recovery for others and lack of security for all those who are drawn into that social tornado which today characterises mankind. We really do live in times of great and fast changes.

It hasn’t always been like this. It took nature billions of years to construct a being able to think, to feel, to dream and to fantasize as we humans can do. A being that can draw conclusions from its thoughts and its actions and is able to reshape matter with its crea-tivity and its hands. This being which we call human. Because of this we have consistently taught ourselves that we are different from all other species on this planet. But like all other kinds of life on earth also mankind is, in a wondrous and complicated way, totally adapted to its natural surroundings by automatic functions of survival built on ancient genetic programs. That is why humans, like all other mammals, can’t choose to go against their animal heritage and their dependence on the ecology of planet Earth, no matter how much we trie to ignore this.

Humans and humanoid beings have existed for at least four million years. But it’s just recently, perhaps ten thousand years ago, that these thinking two-legged creatures came up with the idea to stop wandering around, seeking food by hunting and gathering of berries and roots, and instead of this roaming life stay in one place, building villages and engage in farming. Thus they managed to construct much more complex societies than they could do as nomads.

Over centuries humans have interpreted their more advanced kind of racial ability as a sign of the superiority of man in regard to nature. May be so. But we must also admit that the complexity of our technologies and our societies has increased at an equal rate as the delight over our mental potential to create, build and alter things. It is now easy to observe that our fascination for technical progress often wins over knowledge of the fact that we humans in respect to nature also are two-legged herd animals. Intelligent yes, but also controlled by automatic biologic programs which make us totally dependent on a working interaction with the nature of this planet of which we are an integrated part.

Obviously this raises questions on our biologic ability to adapt to everything we dream up and try to make real.  Today everything that has to do with human life on this planet is so much more complicated than it was just a hundred years ago. But have we, as a species, really grown biologically and mentally as fast as we have developed our technical skill to reconstruct the world?

It doesn’t seem so. While a great part of humanity still has no access to sufficient nutrition and clean water, others die of abundance. While many are so poor that the balance of their life functions is tipping towards bad health and disease, others work so hard to improve their own, already satisfactory, life conditions that their health also is negatively affected. What are we doing, we humans? Wy do we behave lika that?

There are of course many answers to that last question, depending on the theoretical concept which for the moment is more attractive to them who consider themselves to have the answer. New concepts of thought and new explanations are created all the time  and the debate between intellectual thinkers is always going on.

But in all this thinking and debating and creating there is still something which definitely is not a theoretical assumption but a fact. And that fact is that man first and foremost is a biologic being of the planet Earth, its rhythms, its physical conditions and its ecology. In our basic programs for life and survival we are totally adjusted to the specific nature of our planet. Even if we, because of our mental abilities, differ from all other life on this planet, these abilities alone will not be sufficient for mankind to live and to survive separated from the surrounding ecology, as far as we know today. We are born with a physical body which from the first moment of its creation is an integrated part of the physical conditions of this planet. We cannot alter that fact. Consequently we have no other choice than to adapt to the nature of this planet. If we don’t, both our biologic and mental life functions are at risk. Giving priority to intellect and abstract logic thinking, and expecting the body to follow, does not help. Life on this planet is biologic and we are biologic living beings. We cannot ignore this without  hurting ourselves as individuals and as a species.

So, what are we then? One answer is that man primarily is a mammal. A living biologic creature which gives birth to new creatures of the same kind. Many of us have of course some difficulties in accepting such a simplified perspective and claim that man is so much more. And man is of course much more. Or, more correct: man can become much more than other mammals on earth. But we have a biologic body, exactly as the other mammals, and that body is our visa and residence permit on this planet. To deny this is just silly. Everyone can actually discover this himself.

The true difference between us and other animals is, as far as we know, our ability to create complicated mental concepts about ourselves and of the world around us. Consequently we do not only react to our surroundings but are also able to expand our individual minds to awareness, insight and understanding. This is a strange phenomenon which allows us to state that ”I know that I know” and ”I know that I exist”. In this we presumably differ from other mammals, more if we make efforts to develop our individual minds. The anatomical fact that the human body also is equipped with hands, these marvellous instruments, makes us still more different to other earthly creatures. 

The characteristics of man can certainly also be described from the opposite end. A being with a sense for beauty, for love, for music and poetry, even for philosophy and theology, should perhaps be something more than only its biological functions. Maybe a soul-creature which for the moment is located in a body? Or some other type of personal pure consciousness dreaming of having existence in a physical body? Both of these two theories, and many more, seem to have its origin in the ancient hope that biological death will not be the end of conscious life.

Who knows? Perhaps there is some truth in this. But - and this is a great but - even if there were the possibility of life in unknown forms and dimensions it can’t help us with our biological life on earth. The guaranty for physical life on this planet is our physical body. If this body is not allowed to function under conditions to which it has been adapted for eons, its systems will be harmed.

We know that body and mind are in continuous interaction. If the mind is harmed the body will react. If the body is harmed the mind reacts. This mental reaction will again reflect on body functions and so vicious circles will come to life. The ability to maintain harmonious social relations with other people may then also be affected, perhaps followed by frustration and feelings of insecurity and threat, which in turn will reflect on body and mind. In this way these circles can grow ever stronger and become stressors themselves. Not being able to control and persuade the body to function in ways they would prefer is of course an obstacle to many. People with a too strong sense of duty, over-enthusiastic workaholics, grandiose political programmers or profit-maximizing market optimists are often carried away by this and are not aware of their own, and other peoples, physical and mental capacity.

Here we arrive at the scientific concept of stress. But even if theoretical knowledge of stress can be of importance for all of us it is at least equally important to understand ones own personal vulnerability to stress. A conscious and realistic approach to stressors in actual life situations helps in diminishing exposure to stress.

The word stress has originally to do with tension and strength in non-organic materials, for example concrete. The Canadian physician and scientist Hans Selye proposed this  concept for biological functions, but later also for the mental and social functions of man. Biologic stress is is normally an inner ”tension”, which arises as a result of function and interaction in and between the systems of a living body. These functions can be affected by influences from the outer world but also by the activities of our mental systems. All those influences are called ”stressors”. ”Stress” is the actual tension in the body systems which can be more or less activated by one or more stressors. The biological purpose of stress is, according to Hans Selye, to maintain function and balance in and between the bodys life supporting systems in spite of constant influences from without.

Cooperation between important body systems is the necessary pre-requisite for a biologic organism  to preserve its life in a world where many different energies can affect it. How would this organism else be able to keep a constant inner temperature in arctic or tropical climates? To give another example: how could the body fight bacterial and viral infections if the immune system, sometimes for a prolonged period, could not adapt its defence to various aggressors from without?

The ability af a living physical body to balance its life supporting systems with help of a great number of regulating programs is called ”homeostasis”. It is a necessary precondition for biological life in different surroundings. These life supporting systems have an almost incredible ability to adapt. But, like anything else in this universe, there is a limit to this. Too strong or prolonged burdens on them will result in imbalance and eventually in failure of one ore more interacting systems.

Using such a perspective in understanding normal human life functions helps us to define concepts of health, illness, disease and death. If the experience of what we call health on the biological level is defined by a normal homeostasis with good balance in and between the bodys biological systems, we could define lack of functional balance in one or more systems as illness. When one or more systems fail in their functions we could call this disease. And when a sufficient number of life supporting systems fail, and the organism does not show any signs of  active functions anymore, we call this death. 

This general approach would be especially useful in times when the medical profession, because of its strong belief in technological analyses and chemical remedies, has  focused mainly on single biological and mental functions. We seem to have difficulties with a  concept claiming that the over all function of every living being can be understood as a dynamic system which actually is dependent on interacting complicated sub-systems in body and mind. Not to mention the uninterrupted interacting of this principal system with the dynamic systems of nature and society.

An insight in this last type of interaction is necessary for the understanding of biologic life in general. In discussing the place of other biologic creatures in the ecological systems of Earth this seems to be obvious. But when it comes to us humans, who also are biological individuals, we seem to think in other ways. Nevertheless do we live in times when this insight can become crucial for the health and survival of mankind.

Stressors can affect our biologic systems on three levels

Hans Selye proposed that the reaction to harmful strain on our life systems  can take place on three levels. He assumed that the kind of reaction of our body systems is dependent partly on the strength of a stressor, as compared to the bodys ability to resist it, and partly on the length of time this stressor acts on one ore more of these systems. This reaction to active stressors he gave the name of General Adaption Syndrome.

1) The alarm reaction is the direct answer to a strong influence on one or more of the bodies systems. If the stressor is powerful enough to wreck very important life functions immediately the result would be death. If this does not happen, and the stressor remains, the bodys next level of reaction would be

2) The stage of resistance which is defined by the the ability of the first affected systems to resist the stressor under a short or extended period of time and continue to function in a fairly normal way. This adaption to the stressor requires increased activity in the affected system. Resources for this increased activity in the first system are made available by other important life-supporting systems who, as a result of interaction, have to increase their own levels of activity. This then constitutes a condition of increased physiologic stress in several systems. In this way the body is able to resist stressors quite a long time and keep up its life functions. But not indefinitely. If the pressure from stressors does not stop, affected systems will weaken and the most affected system will perhaps fail. This leads to the next stage.

3) The stage of system exhaustion implies a more grave reduction of function, usually in several physiologic and mental systems. Very often one or several of these systems tip over into pronounced dysfunction which then is presenting as observable medical symptoms. This is defined as illness or disease.

If this is happening in our physical systems we usually meet positive appreciation in healthcare and society. But when symptoms mainly emerge from our mental systems, and are not diagnosed as a psychiatric disease, medical insight can often be quite shallow. Nowadays there exists great knowledge of local organic illness in man. There are many medical ways to diminish symptoms and to restore normal physiologic balance. But what not always is thought of is that if the stage of resistance in one system is activated during an extended period of time, other physiologic and mental systems will be affected and driven towards imbalance. In this case a person often will experience feelings of diffuse illness. This condition is very often hard to explaine by laboratory samples. A trustworthy diagnosis may then be diffcult to reach for the modern doctor who requires objective proof. When it comes to a concept of general illness, which can be defined as unbalanced function in several of our life-systems, there is still a lack of understanding of the mixed symptoms this will present in the affected person. And objective ways to detect their cause are scarce.

Here it is important to remember that the brain is not the same as the mind. The brain is a biological organ that belongs to the systems of the body. This implies that the brain can become physiologically affected by the impact of an extended period of stress-induced strain and suffer actual damage to brain cells. This can show up as technically visible and measurable medical signs. But a stressors impact on brain tissue can also present itself as reduced mental endurance, fatigue and changes of mood and emotions. And this is often looked upon with a certain degree of scepticism by family and society and in the worst case by the affected person herself. But strong or extended stressors do have harmful effects on the function of both body and mind. There is nowadays no doubt about this.

All animals living free in nature are totally dependent on physical factors, in themselves and in their natural surroundings. Endurable temperature, fresh air and access to water and food is crucial to their survival. If any of these factors significantly deviates from the needs of the animal this deviation will act as a biologic stressor. The animals body systems will be directly affected. The same applies to us. But also wild animals have, like humans, stressors in their surroundings which act on their bodies but through the mind. An adult hare does know that there are hungry foxes and is always alert to disquieting sounds. If some sound is more disquieting the hare is prepared to run away immediately. This reaction is not only dependent on the physical factor of a sudden new sound alerting the hares ears. The sound is also a mental trigger of fear in the hares mind which in turn will activate the body systems for flight. A wild tiger behaves in the same way. When hearing something suspect he will at first also be still and listen. But then he may instead prepare himself to attack the suspected danger.

These ancient genetic programs are aiming at survival. Man does not differ from other animals in this respect. The American physiologist Walter Cannon (1871–1945) called this inherited function for survival ”fight or flight reaction”. It is trigged in all mammals when they feel threatened and aims at preparing the individual either to fight for its life or to flee for its life. Both actions must of course be done with the physical body. But in order to start this important survival mechanism the animal has to become aware of something that implies threat. Threat is an experience of the conscious mind which, in this case, quickly will stimulate certain brain centers. These will in turn stimulate the body systems to higher levels of activity which makes it possible for the animal to fight or flee. The animal is now in a high level of stress.

Humans who live in peaceful societies with generally high standards of living don’t usually have many physical stressors around them acting directly on their body systems. They have water, food and warm homes when needed. Physical illness can in most cases also be treated quite effectively. The quality of air is perhaps not the best everywhere but in most places not directly toxic. Neither do hungry predators stroll around in freedom. The threat of being killed by natural forces is minimal in highly developed societies. Nevertheless are stress-related conditions an accelerating social and medical problem in these countries. What is it then that is so stressful for us humans?

The answer is quite simple. If our hightened levels of stress are not caused by nature itself only two sources of heightened stress in the human individual will remain. One of them would be those social structures and functions of which we are part. Work and relations for example. These are outside stressors, very often of the mental kind. The other stress producer can then, logically seen, only be our individual mental images of threat which do not always correspond to an outer reality.

My belief is that many people, perhaps with a certain enthusiasm, will agree that functions and changes in the outer world are the most common stressors. But no one can deny that we as individuals also are creators of our own levels of stress by the importance we give to our own interpretation of personal threat. The threat we experience does very often not mirror a situation per se but only our mental view of it.

It is important to remember that the minds rection to fear is not primarily a question of morality: ”be responsible for your own functions”. We can not ask for forgiveness for an unconscious disposition to worry, or feel fear, for certain situations in the surrounding world, even if this reaction only is a creation of our own mind. So we have no cause to blame ourselves and others for our own way to interpret what our mind tells us. To do this would even accelerate the load of stress on our systems. No, this is all about genetic and socially acquired programs and reactions which aime at basic survival. But, being humans, we can of course use our intelligence and our logic abilities to inspect the products of our minds and try to analyse and resist obviously false messages.

Two types of feelings are thus associated with the fight-or-flight reaction. One is fear, in its mildest shape represented as worry and in its worst shape as anxiety and angst. The other feeling is anger and fury. Here it is really possible to see the close communication between mind and body. Strong fear makes me running faster when trying to escape a hungry predator. And if I can’t get away I will of course fight better when feeling rage.

If I have saved my life by running away from the danger, the accelerated body tension and energy will be depleted by the physical effort. I may feel totally exhausted but my level of stress will decline and those systems which have been activated to an accelerated function will return to more normal levels. Thus the physical efforts have lowered the level of stress. The same is of course also true if I fight for my life and succeed to kill the predator. And if I don’t succeed with any of these two physical survival functions there is, according to modern knowledge, a third reaction: I try to play dead, hoping that the danger is avoiding me this way. This is pure nature. But for us humans the situation is much more complex.

Stress in modern society

To live and work among other humans in modern societies is something radically different compared with the living terms of wild animals and original man. An immediate body reaction to an experienced threat, which could be life saving in the bush, usually doesn’t save us from threats we experience in modern societies. On the contrary, this ancient fight-or-flight reaction is often harmful in relations between people. Most threats that we see and feel are not of a kind that we can kill or run away from. And if we react with this third type of survival reaction and try to ”freeze” and ”play dead” it usually doesn’t help us either. Even less are we able to escape physically from stressors of our own mind like frustration and dissatisfaction. Neither is it possible to fight physically against feelings of inferiority, pessimism and resignation.

Worrying, or threatening, situations in our surroundings can, with or without our own contribution, change for the better and cease to act as stressors. But increased levels of stress caused by mental images can not be changed without our own participation. We have to look at ourselves and the filters of fear and dissatisfaction through which we look at the world. Anxiety can of course be relieved to a certain degree by medical drugs. But if continuous medication has to be the prerequisite to inner balance and harmony we will have a problem. Even medical drugs have their side effects, often affecting the clarity of mind. And someone has to prescribe these drugs. In the long run we are better off if we learn to bring down our heightened levels of stress by other means than using drugs. We can enhance our tolerance to stress by learning more about ourselves and our reactions to our own inner fears. This kind of work will always lead to personal growth and maturing. And so we learn to cope with the unavoidable difficulties of life.