Impact Of Stress Throughout the Life Span

Stress is nothing but the normal reaction of body, when changes occur, resulting in physical, emotional, and intellectual responses. The impact of and response to the external or environmental stimuli may vary depending on the developmental phase of a human being. This implies that different external stimuli may have different effect on the initial years of lifespan and the same stimuli may have different effect on the later years of life. The hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis is the most important part of brain which is responsible for responding to external stimuli/stress. Stressful environment/stimuli during pregnancy may lead to disturbed HPA axis activity in the fetus leading to a disturbed response to the stress. There are various theories which have shown that prenatal exposure to stressful conditions may have impact on the adult stress response, social behavior as well as cognition which can further lead to development of psychological disorders like schizophrenia or depression. During adolescence, there are major neuroendocrinal changes taking place due to pubertal changes and exposure to stress during these stages has an impact on the social and psychological behavior in adult life. The exposure to stress during these important phases of life and the responding mechanisms that human brain develops as a response to these stress conditions define an individual's mental health during adulthood and later years of life. These observations indicate the importance of providing children and young adults with ways to face such stress/adversities in life that will prevent life-stress and mental decline and hence development of age-related cognitive disorders in later years of life. Psychological stress and ageing, together, can have enormous impact on an individual's mental as well as physical health. Both ageing and stress affect the immune system in a way that can have impact the physical health. Life stress can thus have significant impact on mental and physical health and hence can affect life expectancy of an individual. Reducing the level of stress and ways to cope up with stressful conditions/phases of life, learnt in the very early years of life, can help reduce the impact of stress on an individual and reduce the impact of stress on life span.