(2) Outline and Evaluate the Evidence for a Link Between Stress and Illness (12 Marks).

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When stressed our immune system’s ability to fight off viral infections is reduced due to a decrease of white blood cells. This is known as immunosuppression, this occurs when the stress hormone corticosteroid is present from a stress response and lowers the number of lymphocytes such as B-cells and T-cells . Stress can have two types of effects, a direct effect or an indirect effect. The direct effect is when stress affects our health directly, for example, when stressed our digestive system is inhibited, after stress is gone, the digestive activity increases, this can lead to the occurrence of Ulcers in the stomach. Stress also increases the heart rate and can lead to the increase of blood pressure, thus Hypertension and can lead to Coronary Heart Disease (CHD). Although this disease can be caused by the indirect effects. Indirect effects of stress are associated with the bad habits that stress causes us to take part in, these included smoking, poor diet and alcohol abuse. These poor habits can thus lead to ill-effects on one’s health. These issues are more related to chronic stress rather than acute stress and it occurs for a long period, thus affecting health for a longer period. There is a considerable amount of research conducted on this topic, for example, stress affecting the digestive system and leading to gastric ulcers. One of these studies was conducted by Brady, in which he wanted to investigate whether the stress of receiving electric shocks lead to stress-related illnesses and whether this would change with the degree of control over the shocks. The monkeys received foot shocks which were signalled by a tone, these monkeys were run in pairs, one of them was called the “executive monkey”, which was able to press a level to avoid shocks. The other was the “yoked” animal, which did not have the lever and received all the shocks anyway. Around a month

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