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Embodying psychological thriving: physical thriving in response to stress - Thriving: Broadening the Paradigm Beyond Illness to Health
Journal of Social Issues, Summer, 1998 by Elissa S. Epel, Bruce S. McEwen, Jeannette R. Ickovics
How Stress Leads to Thriving: Allostasis and the Balance Between Catabolic and Anabolic Processes
Enhanced health can result when the body has the physiological resources (and psychological resources, as we later argue) to build, maintain, and repair itself. This type of restorative activity is governed by many factors, such as nutrition, but also by hormones, especially the balance of hormones relative to each other. According to opponent process theory (Solomon, 1980), a strong negative state is followed by the opposing state, a positive state. Applying this to physical stress, once the body has mounted a protective response and adapted to stress (generally a catabolic process), the opponent process, which is restorative or anabolic, eventually takes oven Physical thriving depends partly on when and for how long the opponent process takes over.
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As shown in Figure 1, the balance between anabolic and catabolic hormones affects whether the body is primarily in a destructive or restorative mode. The sympathetic nervous system drives arousal and the fight-or-flight response. During stress, the sympathetic nervous system releases hormones (such as glucagon, epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol) to increase catabolic processes that inhibit digestion and break down metabolic compounds to quickly mobilize energy. Of the stress hormones, cortisol remains elevated for the longest period after stress, which has important long-term effects on our health (McEwen, 1998; Munck, Guyre, & Holbrook, 1984).
The parasympathetic nervous system triggers release of more anabolic hormones (e.g., growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), insulin, and sex steroids) to counter arousal and increase relaxation, digestion and energy storage, and healing processes, such as promoting protein synthesis. For example, growth hormone supplementation, especially when administered with IGF-1, speeds wound healing and recovery from bums and injury (Bentham, Rodriquez-Arnao, & Ross, 1993; Mayer, Muller, & Herndon, 1996; Meyer, Barrow, & Herndon, 1996), whereas high cortisol increases protein breakdown, inhibits the growth of fibroblasts, and thus slows healing (Saito, Tazawa, Yokoyama, & Saito, 1997; Wajchenberg et al., 1995). Growth hormone is crucial to health, and growth hormone deficiency may be related to premature mortality (Korbonits & Besser, 1996).
The catabolic hormones, especially cortisol, are often antagonistic toward the more anabolic hormones (Sterling & Eyer, 1988; Unterman & Phillips, 1985), and vice versa (Horber & Haymond, 1990). Therefore, the body is constantly fine-tuning the balance between anabolic and catabolic functions, depending on the need. The ensuing level of arousal may play a large role in determining long-term health, and thus profiles of hormonal balance may serve as a window into one's current state of health.
Allostasis describes the body's ability to adapt to constantly changing environments (Sterling & Eyer, 1988) and thus can help describe physical thriving. An ideal or tight allostatic system is one that moves from high to low levels of arousal flexibly and fluidly, depending on the demands. Catabolic hormones are essential to health over the short term. However, when the body is under chronic stress and in a constant state of arousal, these hormones themselves can cause damage, which has been called allostatic load or physical damage due to stress (McEwen & Stellar, 1993). This damage leaves the body less able to respond flexibly to changes in the environment.
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