In a quasi-experiment designed to examine the relief from job stress and burnout afforded by a vacation respite, 76 clerks completed measures of job stress and burnout twice before a vacation, once during vacation, and twice after vacation. There was a decline in burnout during the vacation and a return ...

OBJECTIVES: To study the correlation between wall shear stress and early atherosclerotic lesions in the abdominal aorta. DESIGN: Blinded histomorphometric studies. Comparison with in vitro data. MATERIALS: Abdominal aortic haemodynamics were simulated in a realistic pulsatile flow model. Abdominal aortas from 10 young adults with no signs of atherosclerotic disease ...

When examining headache sufferers' reactivity to stress, few studies attend to differing characteristics of the environment. In this study, we evaluated the influence of the clarity/ambiguity and positive/negative valence of an event on subjects' physiological and psychological reactivity. Migraine (n = 30), tension (n = 39), and control (n = ...

The growing size of world cities and ever more competitive working conditions are thought to cause subjective stress, anxiety and depression, with a resulting decrease in the quality of life, sleep disturbances, drug and alcohol abuse and poor productivity. Acute stress may suppress immune function, leading to an increased incidence ...

The aim of this study was to analyse the changes of baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) and their relation to changes of heart rate and blood pressure in medical students during moderate psychological stress brought about by oral examination. The changes of BRS during the stress were compared with the changes during ...

Although research on the relationship between exercise training and physiological stress reactivity is increasing, we know little about the involvement of brain neurochemistry. Moreover, the few studies that have been performed have concentrated on animals with normally functioning neurochemistry exposed to an acute stressor. Biomedical research is drawing an association ...

Knowledge of the effects of episodic or short-term exercise-stress on endogenous testosterone and luteinizing hormone levels still remains fragmentary and inconclusive. In this study, an approach based on the absolute concentrations of urinary total testosterone (T), luteinizing hormone (LH) and the T/LH concentration ratios, was used to profile short-term exercise-stress ...

We explored the relations among locus of control, sensation seeking, and stress (N = 68 students). Corroborating evidence was found that subjects with an external locus of control are more vulnerable to stress. Subjects scoring higher on the thrill and adventure seeking-dimension of sensation seeking reported less severe physical and ...

Experimental, epidemiologic and clinical studies have provided strong evidence that physical exercise has beneficial effects on multiple physiological variables affecting cardiovascular health (lipoprotein levels, rest blood pressure and heart rate, carbohydrate tolerance, neurohormonal activity). Regular exercise has been shown to slow the progression of cardiovascular disease and to reduce cardiovascular ...

The hippocampus/subiculum has been hypothesized to restrain hypothalamically mediated neuroendocrine responses to psychological stressors. While psychological stress has been observed to restrict plasma vasopressin (AVP) secretion, the role of these brain structures has not been examined. We subjected rats with bilateral aspiration of the hippocampus and controls with bilateral aspiration ...

Oxidative stress is a cellular or physiological condition of elevated concentrations of reactive oxygen species that cause molecular damage to vital structures and functions. Several factors influence the susceptibility to oxidative stress by affecting the antioxidant status or free oxygen radical generation. Here, we review the effect of alcohol, air ...

Despite the physiological importance of arterial baroreflexes as a powerful stabilizer of blood pressure, their functions themselves are not always stable and there are a variety of circumstances in which they are significantly modulated. During stressful conditions, including fight/flight, defense/attack, somatic nociception, visceral nociception, exercise, and mental stress, arterial baroreflexes ...

This study addresses the direct effect of fluid flow shear stress on production of the vascular mediators, PGE2 and PGI2 by vascular smooth muscle cells (SMC). Results indicate that shear stress increases PGE2 and PGI2 release in SMC. The production patterns, however, differ between PGE2 and PGI2. For PGE2, the ...

The effect of prenatal stress was determined on exploration in situations that induce different levels of fear. Dams (12) were stressed by noise and light thrice weekly on an unpredictable basis throughout pregnancy, and 12 controls were left undisturbed. The time spent by different groups of their adult offspring of ...

Positive stress has been described in the literature but not well characterized experimentally. This experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that environmental enrichment and housing density in C57BL/6 female mice modulate immune responses to acute exercise stress. A 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design was used where enrichment ...

Clinical exercise testing has wide application in medicine, including the assessment of functional capacity, ventilatory function, gas exchange, muscle function, and endocrine and metabolic function, and as a test for claudication in peripheral vascular disease. The major use of exercise testing, however, is as a stress test in patients with ...

This report describes the immediate effect of war stress on physiological measures of the auditory startle responses (ASRs). Ten healthy Israeli subjects were examined 4 months before the Gulf war, during a missile alert on the first day of the war, and 8 months after the war. The magnitude and ...

STUDY DESIGN: Cadaveric motion segment experiment. Measurements on each specimen were compared before and after creep loading. OBJECTIVES: To show how sustained "creep" loading affects stress distributions inside intervertebral discs. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA: The central region of an intervertebral disc acts like a hydrostatic "cushion" between adjacent vertebrae. However, ...

The professional activity of air traffic controllers (ATC) is often considered to be rather stressful. Certain characteristics of this job are likely to produce stress; for example an ATC can not predict when a situation becomes critical and he is not able to regulate the workload. In order to assess ...

The elderly constitute an increasing percentage of patients evaluated and treated for coronary artery disease. Clinical and noninvasive evaluation are important in both the diagnosis and prognosis of coronary disease in the elderly, and stress testing is an important part of that evaluation. For older individuals capable of vigorous treadmill ...

The hypothesis that the ability to comfortably spend and use time alone is a buffer against effects of stress, comparable to social support, was tested. A 20-item instrument was developed to evaluate the capacity to be alone (Winnicott, 1958) and was then administered by telephone survey to 500 U.S. adults. ...

The relationship between cross-bridge cycling rate and isometric stress was investigated in rat myometrium. Stress production by myometrial strips was measured under resting, K+ depolarization, and oxytocin-stimulated conditions. Cross-bridge cycling rates were determined from measurements of maximal unloaded shortening velocity, using the quick-release method. Force redevelopment after the quick release ...

The importance of the neutrophil function to host defense and tissue damage has been widely recognized. However, the usefulness of the correlation analysis between phagocytic activity and superoxide production of neutrophils is unknown. We investigated the relationship by histochemical NBT assay using rats and mice exposed to voluntary exercises and ...

The effects of a 10-week aerobic exercise and progressive relaxation training program on somatic, emotional, and behavioral responses to acute stress, as determined by quality of motor performance and affect, were examined. The participants consisted of 60 unfit male university undergraduate students with no previous training in stress management who ...

Ankle to arm index (AAI) defined as the ratio of ankle systolic blood pressure (ASBP), to brachial systolic blood pressure is largely used in the study of lower extremity arterial disease (LEAD). To study the hypothesis of the shunt of blood away from the skin as the explanation of AAI ...

BACKGROUND: Previous clinical research has shown that severely ill (somatic) as well as many psychosomatic patients show raised noradrenaline (NA), adrenaline (AD), cortisol, free serotonin (f5HT) and platelet aggregability. Conversely, they show reduced NA/AD plasma ratio and platelet serotonin (p5HT). They also show adrenal hyperresponsiveness to an oral glucose load. ...

The borderline hypertensive rat (BHR) appears to be an appropriate model for investigating the role of the environment in producing hypertension. Previous studies have demonstrated that the BHR shows chronic blood pressure elevations to both stress and high salt intake. Other studies suggest that interactions between the brain and kidney ...

The EEG from frontal cortex, EMG and EOG were recorded from rats exposed to only exercise (Treadmill), only stress, exercise + stress and neither (control). In comparison with the control group, the percent of Delta activity in the awake was significantly increased in the depressed group and significantly decreased in ...

The present study examined the effects of instruction type and boredom proneness (BP) on vigilance performance, workload, and boredom. Subjects completed the Boredom Proneness Scale and were assigned to high and low groups based on their scores. They then monitored a VDT for critical signals. Half the subjects were instructed ...

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that stress reducing techniques such as meditation alter immune responses after strenous physical stress. METHODS: The hypothesis was tested by studying six meditating and six non-meditating male runners in a concurrent, controlled design. After a period of six months with meditation for the experimental group, ...

MR phase velocity mapping was used to calculate wall shear stress (WSS) in the suprarenal and infrarenal abdominal aorta, two sites with very different proclivities for development of a atherosclerosis. For the eight subjects studied, the average value of the mean (time averaged over the cardiac cycle) WSS in the ...

Non-invasive diagnosis of coronary artery disease is based on the combined use of a technique capable of identifying accurately the presence of ischaemia and a stress capable of safely inducing myocardial ischaemia. In the last few years great progress has been made in this field thanks to the use (a) ...

Stress echocardiography has found acceptance as a routine technique for the diagnosis and evaluation of coronary artery disease. This review concentrates on recent advances in this technique. New approaches including contrast echocardiography, transesophageal stress echocardiography, and color-enhanced wall motion analysis may augment its feasibility and can be used to assist ...

It has been suggested that, premenstrually, women are more vulnerable to the effects of stress. It has also been proposed that the fitter the individual is, the less the body responds to, and the more quickly it recovers from, a stressful experience. The present study investigated whether premenstrual sensitivity to ...

To examine the relationship between society stress and peptic ulcer perforation, time-trend analysis was performed on the annual incidence of perforated peptic ulcer per 100,000 population in Hong Kong during the years 1962-85, when Hong Kong, as a developing city, went through significant socio-economic and political changes, and the trend ...

Constrained body postures are usually cited as the major cause of musculoskeletal static loading. Thus, the main goal of the present study was to develop a ranking system for the stressfulness of the non-neutral static postures around the wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck and lower back. This was based on the ...

A Blow-Fill-Seal machine, set to aseptically fill sterile liquid TSB medium into 20 ml plastic containers, was subjected to a series of environmental microbial challenges in order to evaluate the effects of the room environment, and of the actions of persons in the room, on the sterility of the product. ...

Arbutamine is a new, potent, short-acting synthetic catecholamine developed specifically for use as a cardiac stress agent. Previous reports on the accuracy of arbutamine for the detection of coronary artery disease have relied on heart rate (HR) increases similar to those seen at peak exercise. This study was undertaken to ...

The changes of hormonal and autonomic nervous systems in trained and untrained elderly people were studied. An exercise tolerance test was used as a model of physical stress. Elderly people were more sensitive to the influence of stress factors. The hemodynamic reaction at the same workload was more economical in ...

The purposes of this study were to determine the effect of an exhaustive running bout on intrinsic myocardial function by using the isolated working rat heart and to determine whether exhaustive exercise resulted in measurable oxidative stress in the myocardium. Untrained familiarized male rats were run at 18 m/min on ...

During training at sea, two missile carrier vessels crashed at rather high speed on November 14, 1991. One of the vessels (HMS Luleå) was seriously damaged by the other (HMS Nynäshamn), and one conscripted seaman was killed. Both vessels had a complete crew of 29 each, 15 of whom were ...

A stress management protocol was adapted for use with schizophrenia patients. Elements included short group sessions, reinforcement of stress reduction skills, modified breathing and relaxation exercises, and capillary blood-flow monitoring for quick feedback. The patients demonstrated ability to participate in the group and to learn certain stress management techniques adapted ...

The effects of combined physical and psychological stress on cardiovascular and respiratory responses were examined. Thirty-six undergraduate men performed a mental arithmetic task and moderate aerobic exercise, separately and in combination, while physiological measures were recorded continuously using electrocardiography, impedance cardiography, and respiratory gas analysis techniques. Cardiovascular responses during the ...

The effect of occupational stress on menstrual cycle length was studied prospectively. The hypothesis that occupational stress has a direct or indirect effect on cycle length was tested using path analysis. Twice the number of women involved in active farm, craft, or household work had significantly longer cycle lengths than ...

Cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) to stressful stimuli is predictive of future development of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Anger appears to be an important mediator of this relationship. Unfortunately, the majority of research in this area has utilized predominantly male subjects, leaving the relationship between CVD and anger in females largely unexplored. To ...

The stress-induced changes in peripheral benzodiazepine receptors (PBR) can be observed in a number of different tissues, depending upon the nature and chronicity of the aversive experience. In addition, virtually all stress procedures that cause rapid changes in PBR simultaneously increase the physical activity or metabolic rate of the subjects. ...

We evaluated the influence of sympathetic stimulation, induced by mental stress test, on signal-averaged ECG in 30 healthy subjects and in 30 patients with previous myocardial infarction. Both patient and control groups underwent three consecutive signal-averaged ECG: under basal conditions, during a continuous mental stress test, and 5 min after ...

The effect of inbreeding on survival after a short-term heat shock was tested for two age groups of the cactophilic fruit fly, Drosophila buzzatii, reared under nonstress conditions. Four inbreeding levels (F = 0, F = 0.25, F = 0.375, F = 0.5) were generated by outcrossing or full-sib mating. ...

Previous research indicates that observed correlations between self-reports of job stress and self-reports of strain may be reduced after partialling out the variance due to the personality trait of negative affectivity. The present study examined the effect of negative affectivity on the relationships between self-reports of exercise and strain in ...

A stressor above a threshold magnitude, or multiple stressors applied simultaneously, cause an organism to alter its behaviour and physiology, with the aim of maintaining homeostasis. The adaptive changes that occur are coordinated and mediated by the stress system in the central nervous system (which includes corticotrophin-releasing hormone and noradrenergic ...