Mindfulness meditation: What are its potential health benefits?
Can mindfulness meditation be good medicine for both mental and physical ills?
Jun 3, 2024
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Can mindfulness meditation be good medicine for both mental and physical ills?
Jun 3, 2024
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Stress during childhood is associated with earlier substance use in male and female adolescents, according to a study presented Saturday at ENDO 2024, the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in Boston, Mass. Traumatic events ...
Jun 1, 2024
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America's college students seem to be more stressed than ever, with a new report finding a sharp rise in cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and acute stress disorder (ASD) on campuses across the country.
May 30, 2024
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Residential segregation is an example of the long history of structural racism in the United States. Black Americans are more likely to live in low-quality neighborhoods, which contributes to disparities in health outcomes. ...
May 30, 2024
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Long work hours, little sleep, a full inbox; balancing work and a social life: Stress can pile up and have notable physical effects on the body, including the eyes. Ocular symptoms such as burning, redness, irritation, watery ...
May 29, 2024
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According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 80% of those living with dementia receive informal care from family members or friends. This equates to 16 million family caregivers in the U.S. However, caring ...
May 29, 2024
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We're all familiar with the fact that the quality of our sleep has a strong impact on our waking lives. But what you may not know is that sleep stages contribute to how we process life experiences and memories in different ...
May 28, 2024
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The way Black men see themselves after a firearm injury—whether as a survivor or victim—could change over time and have implications on their mental health, according to a Rutgers Health study.
May 28, 2024
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The stress of heart failure is remembered by the body and appears to lead to recurrent failure, along with other related health issues, according to new research. Researchers have found that heart failure leaves a "stress ...
May 24, 2024
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A comprehensive approach that examines the intersection of multiple biological processes is necessary to elucidate the development of stress-related disorders. In a new study, investigators from McLean Hospital, a member ...
May 23, 2024
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Stress is a term that is commonly used today but has become increasingly difficult to define. It shares, to some extent, common meanings in both the biological and psychological sciences. Stress typically describes a negative concept that can have an impact on one’s mental and physical well-being, but it is unclear what exactly defines stress and whether or not stress is a cause, an effect, or the process connecting the two. With organisms as complex as humans, stress can take on entirely concrete or abstract meanings with highly subjective qualities, satisfying definitions of both cause and effect in ways that can be both tangible and intangible.
The term stress had none of its contemporary connotations before the 1920s. It is a form of the Middle English destresse, derived via Old French from the Latin stringere, "to draw tight." It had long been in use in physics to refer to the internal distribution of a force exerted on a material body, resulting in strain. In the 1920s and 1930s, the term was occasionally being used in biological and psychological circles to refer to a mental strain, unwelcome happening, or, more medically, a harmful environmental agent that could cause illness. Walter Cannon used it in 1926 to refer to external factors that disrupted what he called homeostasis.
Homeostasis is a concept central to the idea of stress. In biology, most biochemical processes strive to maintain equilibrium, a steady state that exists more as an ideal and less as an achievable condition. Environmental factors, internal or external stimuli, continually disrupt homeostasis; an organism’s present condition is a state in constant flux wavering about a homeostatic point that is that organism’s optimal condition for living. Factors causing an organism’s condition to waver away from homeostasis can be interpreted as stress. A life-threating situation such as a physical insult or prolonged starvation can greatly disrupt homeostasis. On the other hand, an organism’s effortful attempt at restoring conditions back to or near homeostasis, oftentimes consuming energy and natural resources, can also be interpreted as stress. In such instances, an organism’s fight-or-flight response recruits the body’s energy stores and focuses attention to overcome the challenge at hand. The ambiguity in defining this phenomenon was first recognized by Hans Selye in 1926 who loosely described stress as something that “…in addition to being itself, was also the cause of itself, and the result of itself." First to use the term in a biological context, Selye continued to define stress as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand placed upon it.” Present-day neuroscientists including Bruce McEwen and Jaap Koolhaas believe that stress, based on years of empirical research, “should be restricted to conditions where an environmental demand exceeds the natural regulatory capacity of an organism.” Despite the numerous definitions given to stress, homeostasis appears to lie at its core.
Biology has progressed in this field greatly, elucidating complex biochemical mechanisms that appear to underlie diverse aspects of stress, shining a necessary light on its clinical relevance and significance. Despite this, science still runs into the problem of not being able to settle or agree on conceptual and operational definitions of stress. Because stress is ultimately perceived as a subjective experience, it follows that its definition perhaps ought to remain fluid. For a concept so ambiguous and difficult to define, stress nevertheless plays an obvious and predominant role in the every day lives of humans and nature alike.
This text uses material from Wikipedia licensed under CC BY-SA