Gregory Taper
Member
Jun 25, 2012
Becoming Stress Proof: The History of Stress With Hans Selye
http://www.dannyroddy.com/main/2012/6/2 ... selye.html
"Adaptability is probably the most distinctive characteristic of life."- Hans Selye
Everyone is experiencing some degree of stress all the time. Engaging in mental chess with a coworker, dealing with a serious illness, or deciding to the watch the 4-hour version of Gone With The Wind, are all examples of serious stressors that can be experienced daily.
While this sounds "all-bad," stress is the indispensable physiological ability to adapt when the production of energy is insufficient, and in the short-term, is protective.
However, after hour one of Gone With The Wind (or 20 minutes of the musical Evita) stress becomes pathogenic due to the hormones and inflammatory markers that play an important role in most all diseases.
It's hard to discuss stress without mentioning Hans Selye.
Selye helped coin the word stress in French (le stress), regularly displayed humility in his writing, and was a renegade endocrinologist that bet his entire career on the conventional views of stress being incorrect.
When compared to those who currently pontificate about the role of stress in disease, Selye's work is unique, in that he was an active participant in uncovering the numerous mechanisms behind the stress response: "Of course, only a small portion of this work was performed by our group in Montreal. Yet, I hope to give you a fairly accurate eyewitness account of its growth, for at least I can say: "I was there." I was there to watch as this field emerged from the unknown and as it went through the first stages of its development." - Hans Selye
A Non-Specific Syndrome That Isn't Worth Treating
Selye's concept of stress was formed by lectures he attended in 1925 as a medical student. As part of his curriculum, Selye was shown several patients in the earliest stages of various infectious diseases. The professor carefully pointed out that the patient looked and felt ill, had a coated tongue, digestive issues, aches and pains, was depressed, and had psoriasis.
However, the professor ignored the patients' symptoms explaining that they were "non-specific" and hence "of no use" when attempting to find a suitable drug for killing the germs "responsible" for making the patient ill.
The professor's course of identifying specific maladies to be treated by specific drugs was lost on Selye. Rather than accepting the close minded view towards the "non-specific" symptoms the patient was experiencing, Selye asked himself why a wide variety of disease states (measles, scarlet fever, influenza) shared the same "non-specific" symptoms of a number of toxic drugs, allergens, and non-infectious diseases.
This event left a profound impression on Selye and gave birth to "general adaptation syndrome" or GAS, which has also been referred to as "the stress syndrome" or "the syndrome of being sick."
General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
Selye described GAS as "general" because it brought upon a systemic defense phenomenon considered to be "adaptive" and "syndrome" because the individual manifestations varied depending on several different factors.
GAS could be elicited by exposing animals to toxins, adrenaline, insulin, extreme cold, extreme heat, x-rays, trauma (intense light or sound), hemorrhage, or inflicting pain or forced muscular exercise.
"We could find no noxious stimulus that did not elicit our syndrome." - Hans Selye
GAS can be broken up into three stages:
The Alarm Stage (Shock) - A generalized "call to arms" of the body's defensive mechanisms. No living organism can be maintained continuously in the alarm state. If the stress is great enough to be incompatible with life, then death occurs during the alarm reaction.
The Stage of Resistance - If an organism survives the alarm stage, what followed was a stage of adaptation, or resistance. In many ways the stage of resistance is the exact opposite of the alarm reaction. Whereas the alarm reaction is depleting, the stage of resistance is conserving.
The Stage of Exhaustion - Eventually, prolonged exposure to any stressor caused the loss of "adaptation energy." Symptomatology of the stage of exhaustion is strikingly similar to that of the initial alarm reaction causing premature aging and eventually death.
Criticisms of GAS
GAS was not accepted by Selye's peers, however:
"But. Selye. try to realize what you are doing before it is too late! You have now decided to spend your entire life studying the pharmacology of dirt!"
"Of course, he was right. Nobody could have expressed it more poignantly; that is why it hurt so much that I still remember the phrase after some 17 years. Only that to me the "pharmacology of dirt" - i.e, the response to non-specific damage as such - seemed the most promising subject in medicine." - Hans Selye
A frequent argument (that is still used today) is that "theories of everything" are bogus and that different diseases need to be treated differently.
Selye rejected this idea, while acknowledging that the idea of GAS, in the beginning, sounded just as incredible to him as it did to his critics:
"A priori we would be also inclined to think that if all our "diseases of adaptation" would have a single cause in the G-A-S, they should necessarily always occur, simultaneously in the same patient; everybody who is exposed to any stressor of sufficient intensity should develop them all. This is obviously not the case.
The same electricity can create motion, light, sound, heat, cold and innumerable combinations of these effects, depending upon whether it is conducted, selectively or in combination, to an electric motor, a light bulb, a bell, a stove, or a refrigerator.
For a savage who never heard of electricity it would be quite incredible that all these gadgets can be operated, singly or in any desired combination by regulating one force from a single switch board. To him this would seem just as incredible as it seemed to me at first, that diverse derailments of a single adaptation syndrome could call forth such vastly different manifestations of disease as those which I have enumerated in my previous lecture." - Hans Selye
Mystic Hippy Energy
The underlining factor that influenced the outcome of the animals ability to cope with any given stressor was dubbed "adaptation energy":
"Let us illustrate this point by an example. A rat is placed into a very cold room of, let us say, 2°c. It gradually learns how to conserve heat, by constriction of the peripheral vessels in the skin, an increase in basal metabolism and so forth. A priori I would have thought that the animal should now be able to live just as long in this cold chamber as at room temperature, assuming that we furnish the necessary calories to produce adequate amounts of heat. Yet, experience showed that continued exposure to cold or, as far as that goes, to any other stressor, sooner or later inexorably leads to a breakdown of the adaptive powers; that is, exhaustion of what has been called the adaptation energy." - Hans Selye
Energy?! Woah, woah, woaaaahhhh... I didn't sign on for this hippy ***t Roddy!
Look, there is nothing wrong with mystic hippy energy. I walked through Golden Gate Park today and was practically drowning in it. The bongos, the drum circles, the never ending stories of corporate espionage; hippy energy is clearly a part of the circle of life.
Selye's "adaptive energy," however, is something completely different:
"Furthermore. an animal highly adapted to one stressor agent (e.g., cold) loses much of its resistance and adaptability to other stressors (e.g.. drugs). We called this "crossed sensitization" and ascribed it to a consumption of adaptation energy, necessitated by exposure to the first stressor agent. Adaptation energy (whatever this may be) proved to be a finite quantity of which each organism has only a given amount. Presumably, genetic factors determine just how much of it is apportioned to each newborn individual. Yet, whatever the total quantity, it may be used up very slowly during a long, monotonously restful existence protected against every kind of exposure, or it may be consumed rapidly to maintain life under ever-changing conditions, which require extreme efforts of adaptation. It appeared to be something like an inherited fortune which could be spent sparingly over a long, quiet lifetime, or rapidly in generous. large sums to cover the exigencies of a vigorous and eventful existence." - Hans Selye
Stressor > Inherent [or Generative?] Adaptive Energy > Outcome Depends On Energy
So here we have a simple idea of stress as a tug-o-war between adaptive energy and any given stressor (allergen, environmental toxin, malnutrition, darkness, etc.).
Next week we'll explore adaptive energy and the role of the thyroid in the stress response.
Becoming Stress Proof: The History of Stress With Hans Selye
http://www.dannyroddy.com/main/2012/6/2 ... selye.html
"Adaptability is probably the most distinctive characteristic of life."- Hans Selye
Everyone is experiencing some degree of stress all the time. Engaging in mental chess with a coworker, dealing with a serious illness, or deciding to the watch the 4-hour version of Gone With The Wind, are all examples of serious stressors that can be experienced daily.
While this sounds "all-bad," stress is the indispensable physiological ability to adapt when the production of energy is insufficient, and in the short-term, is protective.
However, after hour one of Gone With The Wind (or 20 minutes of the musical Evita) stress becomes pathogenic due to the hormones and inflammatory markers that play an important role in most all diseases.
It's hard to discuss stress without mentioning Hans Selye.
Selye helped coin the word stress in French (le stress), regularly displayed humility in his writing, and was a renegade endocrinologist that bet his entire career on the conventional views of stress being incorrect.
When compared to those who currently pontificate about the role of stress in disease, Selye's work is unique, in that he was an active participant in uncovering the numerous mechanisms behind the stress response: "Of course, only a small portion of this work was performed by our group in Montreal. Yet, I hope to give you a fairly accurate eyewitness account of its growth, for at least I can say: "I was there." I was there to watch as this field emerged from the unknown and as it went through the first stages of its development." - Hans Selye
A Non-Specific Syndrome That Isn't Worth Treating
Selye's concept of stress was formed by lectures he attended in 1925 as a medical student. As part of his curriculum, Selye was shown several patients in the earliest stages of various infectious diseases. The professor carefully pointed out that the patient looked and felt ill, had a coated tongue, digestive issues, aches and pains, was depressed, and had psoriasis.
However, the professor ignored the patients' symptoms explaining that they were "non-specific" and hence "of no use" when attempting to find a suitable drug for killing the germs "responsible" for making the patient ill.
The professor's course of identifying specific maladies to be treated by specific drugs was lost on Selye. Rather than accepting the close minded view towards the "non-specific" symptoms the patient was experiencing, Selye asked himself why a wide variety of disease states (measles, scarlet fever, influenza) shared the same "non-specific" symptoms of a number of toxic drugs, allergens, and non-infectious diseases.
This event left a profound impression on Selye and gave birth to "general adaptation syndrome" or GAS, which has also been referred to as "the stress syndrome" or "the syndrome of being sick."
General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)
Selye described GAS as "general" because it brought upon a systemic defense phenomenon considered to be "adaptive" and "syndrome" because the individual manifestations varied depending on several different factors.
GAS could be elicited by exposing animals to toxins, adrenaline, insulin, extreme cold, extreme heat, x-rays, trauma (intense light or sound), hemorrhage, or inflicting pain or forced muscular exercise.
"We could find no noxious stimulus that did not elicit our syndrome." - Hans Selye
GAS can be broken up into three stages:
The Alarm Stage (Shock) - A generalized "call to arms" of the body's defensive mechanisms. No living organism can be maintained continuously in the alarm state. If the stress is great enough to be incompatible with life, then death occurs during the alarm reaction.
The Stage of Resistance - If an organism survives the alarm stage, what followed was a stage of adaptation, or resistance. In many ways the stage of resistance is the exact opposite of the alarm reaction. Whereas the alarm reaction is depleting, the stage of resistance is conserving.
The Stage of Exhaustion - Eventually, prolonged exposure to any stressor caused the loss of "adaptation energy." Symptomatology of the stage of exhaustion is strikingly similar to that of the initial alarm reaction causing premature aging and eventually death.
Criticisms of GAS
GAS was not accepted by Selye's peers, however:
"But. Selye. try to realize what you are doing before it is too late! You have now decided to spend your entire life studying the pharmacology of dirt!"
"Of course, he was right. Nobody could have expressed it more poignantly; that is why it hurt so much that I still remember the phrase after some 17 years. Only that to me the "pharmacology of dirt" - i.e, the response to non-specific damage as such - seemed the most promising subject in medicine." - Hans Selye
A frequent argument (that is still used today) is that "theories of everything" are bogus and that different diseases need to be treated differently.
Selye rejected this idea, while acknowledging that the idea of GAS, in the beginning, sounded just as incredible to him as it did to his critics:
"A priori we would be also inclined to think that if all our "diseases of adaptation" would have a single cause in the G-A-S, they should necessarily always occur, simultaneously in the same patient; everybody who is exposed to any stressor of sufficient intensity should develop them all. This is obviously not the case.
The same electricity can create motion, light, sound, heat, cold and innumerable combinations of these effects, depending upon whether it is conducted, selectively or in combination, to an electric motor, a light bulb, a bell, a stove, or a refrigerator.
For a savage who never heard of electricity it would be quite incredible that all these gadgets can be operated, singly or in any desired combination by regulating one force from a single switch board. To him this would seem just as incredible as it seemed to me at first, that diverse derailments of a single adaptation syndrome could call forth such vastly different manifestations of disease as those which I have enumerated in my previous lecture." - Hans Selye
Mystic Hippy Energy
The underlining factor that influenced the outcome of the animals ability to cope with any given stressor was dubbed "adaptation energy":
"Let us illustrate this point by an example. A rat is placed into a very cold room of, let us say, 2°c. It gradually learns how to conserve heat, by constriction of the peripheral vessels in the skin, an increase in basal metabolism and so forth. A priori I would have thought that the animal should now be able to live just as long in this cold chamber as at room temperature, assuming that we furnish the necessary calories to produce adequate amounts of heat. Yet, experience showed that continued exposure to cold or, as far as that goes, to any other stressor, sooner or later inexorably leads to a breakdown of the adaptive powers; that is, exhaustion of what has been called the adaptation energy." - Hans Selye
Energy?! Woah, woah, woaaaahhhh... I didn't sign on for this hippy ***t Roddy!
Look, there is nothing wrong with mystic hippy energy. I walked through Golden Gate Park today and was practically drowning in it. The bongos, the drum circles, the never ending stories of corporate espionage; hippy energy is clearly a part of the circle of life.
Selye's "adaptive energy," however, is something completely different:
"Furthermore. an animal highly adapted to one stressor agent (e.g., cold) loses much of its resistance and adaptability to other stressors (e.g.. drugs). We called this "crossed sensitization" and ascribed it to a consumption of adaptation energy, necessitated by exposure to the first stressor agent. Adaptation energy (whatever this may be) proved to be a finite quantity of which each organism has only a given amount. Presumably, genetic factors determine just how much of it is apportioned to each newborn individual. Yet, whatever the total quantity, it may be used up very slowly during a long, monotonously restful existence protected against every kind of exposure, or it may be consumed rapidly to maintain life under ever-changing conditions, which require extreme efforts of adaptation. It appeared to be something like an inherited fortune which could be spent sparingly over a long, quiet lifetime, or rapidly in generous. large sums to cover the exigencies of a vigorous and eventful existence." - Hans Selye
Stressor > Inherent [or Generative?] Adaptive Energy > Outcome Depends On Energy
So here we have a simple idea of stress as a tug-o-war between adaptive energy and any given stressor (allergen, environmental toxin, malnutrition, darkness, etc.).
Next week we'll explore adaptive energy and the role of the thyroid in the stress response.
