Homeostasis v2.

0: A new approach to explaining the stress response

January 7, 2011

Every person experiences the physiological effects of stress. An increase in blood pressure, an
upset stomach, focused attention, and increased breathing rate are all common effects of a stress
response. Whether it is sitting in traffic, being placed on hold, or filling out confusing tax forms, many
daily activities come with these noticeable changes in body arousal and behavior. Many people do not
even have to be in a stressful situation to experience these bodily changes. The anticipation of an
important meeting or deadline, exam, or life event may also result in the same stress response.
Everyone knows these feelings, but why does this happen?

Through evolution, humans have adapted to environmental stressors by developing

physiological stress response system. Due to the fact that early man did not have to worry about paying
off a mortgage or giving an important speech, the stress response system adapted to various natural
stresses that were common in an uncivilized world. This stress response system is commonly referred to
as the “fight or flight” response. When faced with a predator in the wild, an animal must instantly decide
whether to fight its attacker or flee to save its life. This automatic response system is very similar in both
humans and animals. The stress response focuses on the body’s instant need to mobilize its energy
supply when faced with a threat in order to power the muscles most effectively. In civilized society
where safety is ensured, people do not need to run from predators (with exceptions, of course) and
more commonly experience stressful situations similar to anticipating giving a speech or planning for
one’s financial future. Even these events may result in the same feelings as though one were being
chased by a saber-toothed cat. However, this stress response was naturally intended to be activated for
a short period of time. Chronic stresses,, such as going to a job that you hate for ten consecutive years,
are very dangerous to the body and may result in several stress related diseases. For a long time,
researchers thought this stress response was governed by a process called homeostasis.

Homeostasis seeks to explain the stress response by comparing the body to a balance. The body
seeks to maintain a balance between internal and external activities. When an event affects the body,
the body must react in order to counter-act the event. For example, when a person gets hot, the skin
perspires to moisten and cool itself. Homeostasis relies on two main ideas; that there is an optimal level
for each bodily function and that some regulatory mechanism at the site of the event is responsible for
returning the affected system to its optimal level. This action-reaction way of looking at the stress
response has failed to account for more complex responses from the body as a whole. First, it fails to
take into account differences in optimal bodily levels in different environmental settings and second, it
fails to explain the stress response in anticipation of a stressful event.

A more unified bodily perspective of the stress response built on the idea of homeostasis is
more effective at explaining this phenomenon. This more unified perspective looks at bodily responses
as a whole in order to regulate the body and maintain optimal bodily levels. This concept is known as
allostasis. Allostasis follows that the optimal bodily levels may be different in different conditions, for
example, from when a person is sleeping and when a person is running a marathon. Also, allostasis does
not rely on localized regulatory control mechanisms in order to maintain optimal levels. Allostatic
change occurs on a bodily scale and may involve multiple bodily systems to restore optimal levels or to
anticipate stressful events. Rather than the skin perspiring in order to cool in the homeostatic view, the
allostatic view would explain this response by employing multiple body systems. The allostatic view
would say the skin became hot and then sent impulses through the nerves to the brain. The brain’s
regulatory mechanisms then send messages back to the skin to begin to perspire by drawing moisture
away from other areas of the body. This view explains how multiple body systems are employed to
respond to stress. This model also explains how prolonged activation of the stress response is
responsible for causing wear and tear on the body’s systems.

References
Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why Zebras don’t get ulcers: The acclaimed guide to stress, stress-related
diseases, and coping (3rd edition). New York: W. J. Freeman & Company. ISBN: 0-8050-7369-8.