PSY 1102 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12: Coronary Artery Disease, Sympathetic Nervous System, Cardiovascular Disease

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1102
• Professor: Marcel Viens

Document Summary

Stress, if it endures, can increase our risk for serious illness or death. Behavioral medicine : an interdisciplinary field that integrates behavioral and medical knowledge and applies that knowledge to health and disease. Health psychology : a subfield of psychology that provides psychology"s contribution to behavioral medicine. Stress : the process appraise as threatening or challenging by which we perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that we. When perceived as challenges, stressors can have positive effects. Momentary stress can mobilize the immune system for fending off infections and healing wounds, and can arouse us and motivate us to conquer problems. Extreme cold, lack of oxygen, emotion-arousing incidents all trigger and outpouring of stress hormones (epinephrine and norepinephrine) Sympathetic nervous system increases heart rate and respiration, diverts blood from digestion to skeletal muscles, dulls pain, releases sugar and fat from body stores (preparing for fight or flight) Outer part of adrenal glands secrete glucocorticoid stress hormones.