Discussion board post: How the body adapts to stress through its endocrine and sympathetic nervous systems.

You will be responding to a discussion board post. This post should be 80% you, and then facts found from other sources. Its not opinionated. It needs to have critical thinking. 125 Word minimum, APA format, cited. It needs to pertain to the paragraph and what the paragraph says. Other things can be added in as well, but make sure it is not just random facts. Below is the paragraph you will be responding to:

(follow this rubric):

1. Student submitted a thorough, informational and clear response that advanced the discussion with detail. Critical thinking about topic was included.

10

2. Assignment submitted on time and on a different day than other posts. Assignment met 125 word count minimum.

5

3. Appropriate scientific college-level sources were used. Post contained APA formatted references and in-text citations. The post was grammatically correct.

5

9.I’m stressed! How the body adapts to stress through its endocrine and sympathetic nervous systems.

COLLAPSE

No matter where you are in your life, we all experience stress. I personally believe that it’s one of the things that we all have in common. Not only doesn’t it effect our emotional well being, but it also can disrupt homeostasis in the human body! There’s two types of stressors – physical and emotional. Emotional stressors are basically anything that elicits a strong emotional response like anger or anxiety, like when corporate comes to check out your job. Physical stressors are a little easier to pinpoint. It can be something as simple as a hard exercise session to a serious physical injury. Once one of those stressors disrupts homeostasis, the body responds with the stress response.

The stress response, or general adaptation syndrome, typically elevates the cortisol levels of the body. This response typically occurs in three stages. The first stage is the alarm reaction. This stage sounds a lot like prepping for flight-or-fight. The sympathetic nervous system supplies the norepinephrine and the adrenal medulla the epinephrine. As a result of these two getting involved, the body begins to use stored glycogen. The stored glycogen consumption takes us to our next stage, the stage of resistance.

The stage of resistance happens several hours after the first stage begins. To hit the second stage, you need to be stressed out long enough to completely deplete your body’s glycogen stores. What ends up happing is your body goes ‘oh crap’ and having to find an alternative fuel for your metabolism. The winner? Cortisol. The hypothalamus begins the chain for cortisol production. So what exactly does cortisol do? It promotes the breakdown of fat and protein into the base materials for the liver to perform gluconeogenesis. Short term this is all well and good, but long term? Long term this can hurt fertility and sexual functions in both sexes and if that’s not bad enough for you, it can also hurt your immune system.

The final stage is the stage of exhaustion. When your body finally depletes its fat stores during the stage of resistance, this stage begins. This is where there

a sudden decline and then death. The body begins to use its muscles for fuel and the muscular system will begin to break down as the adrenal cortex may stop producing glucocorticoids. Death usually occurs at this point due to infection or heart/kidney failure.

WC:393

Saladin, K. S. (2018). Anatomy and physiology: the unity of form and function (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.