The Benefits of Stress
ENG 204
Rayan Badran
Ali Al Hady
Research Introduction
The Benefits of Stress
The nature of stress, as a state of psychological draining or tension subsequent to adversative or challenging conditions, dates to the origin of humanity itself. Up until 1936, the concept of stress was considered to be a vague phenomenon, one that is concisely indefinable, defying all means of medical measurability. However, the term “stress”, as it is commonly used today, finds its root in Hans Selye’s Stress of Life, in which, after a series of conducted experiments, comes to the conclusion that stress is “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change” (Selye, 1976). This response, as the experiments have shown, usually includes recurrent symptoms such as stomach ulceration and agitation (Selye, 1976).
As previously mentioned, the concept,of stress, though recently defined, has been a major part in behavioural patterns in living organisms, ranging from plants to human beings. That being said, the nature of stress does not find its roots in psychological tension, as it occurs in vegetal bodies that do not possess of a nervous system. Instead, it acts as a behavioural regulator, a manifestation that occurs in a threatening situation that a living organism finds itself in. It is, as Darwin’s theory of evolution would support, an innate phenomenon that ensures environmental adaptation and natural selection (Korte, Koolhaas, Wingfield & McEwen, 2005). However, despite Selye’s momentous definition of stress, Singer and Davidson, in the endeavour of further illustrating the “nonspecific” suggested that the previously mentioned characteristics are not that of stress in itself, but rather of “stressors.” The latter could have measurable, predictable responses, whereas the “nonspecific” responses that are mutual amongst patients undergoing diverse diseases (Selye, 2013), are those that result from any physical or psychological stress. As such, stress becomes the “circumstance external to a person which makes unusual or extraordinary