Stress, the stress response, and the negative effects of chronic stress were first linked to the 1930's when McGill University endocrinologist Hans Selye studied the behavior of rats. Specifically, he observed what happened to rat's hormones when they were subjected to a variety of stressors, including starvation, extremes in temperature, and slamming doors. Selye applied the engineering term “stress” to define the myriad of traumatizing behaviors to which the rats had been subjected. To explain how they reacted to stress, he coined the term general adaptation syndrome, a response, he said, that consists of three stages: alarm, adaptation (or resistance), and exhaustion.

Stage 1 Occurs when the body becomes aware of the stressor, alerts its systems, then prepares to meet the threat (the fight or flight response).

Stage 2 Occurs when the body either adapts to the threat or successfully resists the threat with its stress-response mechanism and then returns to its natural state.

Stage 3 Occurs only after prolonged exposure to stressors and its marked by the stressed body contracting various diseases. Selye attributed this phenomenon to a depletion of the body's stress-response hormones.


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