Kelly McGonigal discusses new research on stress and presents a new way to think about stress to improve your health.
Should you choose to complete this activity for credit for blog comments, please complete the following:
- Watch Kelly's TED Talk here.
- Kelly is a health psychologist. What is health psychology?
- Discuss the relationship between stress and cardiovascular health. (You may wish to look for additional information elsewhere)
- How does oxytocin play a role in stress? (You may wish to look for additional information elsewhere)
- Around the 10:40 mark in the video, she begins describing a research study looking at the relationship between stress and time spent helping others. Describe what the researchers did and what they found. If you completed the blog during Week 2 (Do Good, Feel Good), how do these findings relate to this assignment?
- Did watching this TED Talk change the way you view stress? If so, why.
This TEDtalk was titled “How to Make Stress Your Friend” and was conducted by Kelly McGonigal, who is hopefully a professor, but is definitely a health psychologist. A health psychologist is concerned with applying psychological principles to heal physical illnesses and medical problems. They essentially try and cure physical ailments with mental/ psychological remedies.
ReplyDeleteStress has a wide range of effects on your cardiovascular health. When you are stressed, your heart rate goes up, your rate of blood flow increased which increases blood pressure, you release fatty acids into your bloodstream to increased energy, and your blood vessels constrict. The most negative effect of chronic stress on your cardio vascular is the constricted blood vessels. But a positive effect that also comes from stress is the release of Oxytocin. Oxytocin fine tunes your brains social instincts which primes you to do things that strengthen close relationships. Oxytocin positively correlates with stress, just like adrenaline. It motivates you to seek support. It not only acts on brain but also body. Oxytocin is a natural anti-inflammatory for your heart. The heart has receptors for this hormone and when it is absorbed into your heart, it helps hearts heal from the damages which are caused by stress.
The last research study Kelly described was a study on stress and how it is affected by the amount of time someone spends helping others. It research group was a group of 1000 US adults between the ages of 34 – 93. The study found that major stressful life crises increase the chances of having a stress related death by 30%, that is, unless you spend time caring for others. When you spend time caring for others, there is no increase of a stress related death. As Kelly called it, it was a caring created resilience.
Due to this study, I now see stress can be utilized as a potentially positive feeling. I think that every incoming freshmen should watch this video. How you handle stress is a big part of life. Being that this is my senior year, I am about to go on the job search which means I will have many interviews and presentations. I will now think of this TEDtalk whenever I have any sort of presentation, and I hope that I can harness all of stress’s potential. This may increase my life and possible get me a great job!
Health psychology is a specialty area that focuses on how biological, social and psychological factors influence health and illness. For a long time psychologists and scientists alike believed that there was a strongly negative correlation between stress and heart health. (More stress = Worse health) What Kelly McGonigal explained was that it can be negative, if the body believes it is negative. If you use the natural stress reactions of your body in a positive way, it is much better for your heart and circulatory system.
ReplyDeleteOxytocin helps the arteries in the circulatory system to remain dilated which reduces the resistance of the arteries and allows the blood to flow much more smoothly. This is better for the system as it reduces the circulatory systems workload. It did, from now on I will try to use the stress I feel instead of letting it be a burden.
Health psychology is the subfield of psychology concerned with the relation of psychosocial factors to the promotion and maintenance of health, and with the causation, prevention and treatment of illness. Stress can have both positive and negative effects on cardiovascular health. The negative effects stress can have on cardiovascular health are that it increases blood flow while constricting the blood vessels causing increased blood pressure. This increased blood pressure can lead to cardiac diseases such as heart attacks. The positive effect stress has on the heart is that it causes the release of oxytocin. Oxytocin plays a role in your health by making you more social. Stress causes the release of oxytocin causing you to crave physical contact with your friends and family. Oxytocin also to protect your body from the negative effects of stress. This ted talk did change the way I view stress by showing me a new way to look at the symptoms of stress. Next time I am feeling stressed I will just remind myself that this is my body helping me rise to this challenge.
ReplyDeleteKelly is a health psychologist who’ mission is to make people happier and healthier. This talk is explaining the correlation between heath and stress. When someone is stressed their heart pumps faster and their veins contract when they are stressed. This is making the heart work harder as it is pushing blood through smaller areas. If you have chronic stress your veins and arteries are contracted for most of the time causing harm to the heart. But in a new study we see a new hormone called oxytocin which is help repair the heart and strengthen it is also released during stressful times. Along with this hormone and knowing how to react to stress it can strengthen your heart and the relationships around you(oxytocin is hormone released with being in a relationship). I talked about working at camp and being in stressful situations, and talking about if you haven’t worked at camp you just couldn’t get it. But when in watching this video it explains it perfect. As you are dealing with your stress you are working through it with the people around you building relationships around you. With dealing with not only your stress but everyone’s around you it makes you stronger and being able to handle many different kinds of situations. I can’t say this video changed the way I felt about stress but it gave me the science behind what I felt.
ReplyDeleteKelly McGonigal’s TED talk was very interesting. One of the statistics I found to be very interesting was that 43% of all people that experienced a lot of stress, and believed that stress was bad for ones health, died within those 8 years, while the people that experienced a lot of stress and did not believe it was bad for ones health had the lowest risk of death. I found those statistics interesting because it almost seems as though one’s outlook on stress plays a huge role in their overall health. I also found it interesting that not only does stress take an immediate mental tole, it takes an immediate physical tole as well, blood vessels contract and your heart starts racing. This article not only made me interested in the field of health psychology, it gave me a whole new outlook on stress.
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