Among the reasons leading to serious diseases, we must first of all point to nervous overloads, negative psychological stimuli, and psychoemotional stresses. It is impossible to take into account the harm that even a simple word causes, how much it reduces the life of a person! It is irreparable damage that it does. Many severe illnesses, resulting in disability or death of a person in creative age, appear and develop as a result of severe or prolonged negative emotions. And first of all the heart suffers from them.
Fear of starvation, cold, before the terrible phenomena of nature, love dramas, the death of loved ones, finally meeting with enemies, rivals, battles with them put a person on the verge of extreme mental stress. As a rule, at these moments he acted: he threw himself into a fight, ran away, chased, built obstacles, and procured food.
Mental tension subsided, nerves found detente.
Nowadays, in most cases, in moments of emotional stress, even the most extreme, a person is forced to “turn on the brake system,” that is, to try to keep calm in any circumstances. “To seem smiling and simple is the highest art in the world” (S. Esenin). About a person who knows how to behave in a constant, proper form, they usually say: a cultured person, educated, strong-willed – this person will not drop, behave with dignity, etc. And this, of course, is correct.
This behavior corresponds to the highest concepts of the morality of modern man, his morality, behavior. But in these cases, the nervous system takes the load on itself. However, our nerves, like everything in the world, have a certain margin of safety. Gradually this reserve runs low, and anomalies appear, diseases that are a direct or indirect consequence of nervous system overstrain. There are many such anomalies, they can not be counted; It is difficult to find in the body a site that would not be depending on the state of the nervous system and on which there would not be an overexertion or stress.
Severe stress occurs under the influence of extreme irritants: severe intoxication, infection, burns, trauma, etc.
If as a result of the “extreme stimulus” there are damages or “stains” in the form of various pathological processes, the intensified activity of all mechanisms that adapt the organism to new conditions develops.
Stressful influences lead to profound violations of the functions of all systems and organs, which mobilize their forces to combat irritants. There is an intensified activity of the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, all endocrine and harmonic mechanisms. Adrenal glands expel a large amount of adrenaline into the blood. The latter causes violent vasospasm, which leads to increased activity of the heart, lungs, liver, excessive consumption of energy resources.
With prolonged or very intense action of the stimulus, the adaptive abilities of the organism may be insufficient or quickly consumed. This leads to loss or exhaustion of opportunities for resistance, and consequently, to the development of dystrophic disorders, the onset of the disease and even the death of the body.
Further development of this issue, in particular by Russian scientists, from the point of view of Pavlov’s study of nerves has shown that stress can arise not only from some physico-chemical effects on the body, but also from a mental trauma in the form of a rude word, An unpleasant message, a grievous grief.
Hence the new term “psychoemotional stress”, which can produce as much destruction in the body as the action of any physical agents.
A great work was done by Professor V. G. Startsev, who for twenty years experimentally studied this question in monkeys. He proved that psychoemotional stress is accompanied by deep changes in all physiological systems: excitation, change of electrocardiogram, heart rhythm, blood pressure, blood composition, blood sugar level, hormonal pattern, gastric secretion. He managed to prove that only that psychoemotional stress leads to a disease that repeatedly interrupts the natural, normal excitation of any system. For monkeys, a powerful psychoemotional stress is giving it immobility, the so-called immobilization stress. But other kinds of stresses can be applied, such as evasion from a female or catching a monkey running away from the enclosure. And if normal food excitement, that is, ordinary food, is repeatedly interrupted by immobilization or other stress, this will lead to a chronic violation of conditioned food reflexes, to gastric achilles, to precancerous diseases of the stomach.
The use of intensive work of the cardiovascular system with a five-minute pursuit of the monkey and its subsequent immobilization leads to hypertension and myocardial infarction. When a combination of sugar loads with immobilization develops diabetes mellitus, etc. That is, experimentally proved the possibility of the occurrence of severe diseases of various systems and organs under the influence of a psychoemotional stimulus.
The data obtained on monkeys help us to find an explanation of the causes of a number of human diseases under the influence of psychoemotional trauma.
It can be easily imagined that if the usual meal is interrupted by some unpleasant telephone conversation or quarrel, for example between spouses, then the normal food reflex is immediately broken, the gastric juice ceases to be produced, and the digestive function becomes disrupted. Repeated psychoemotional stresses during meals can lead to severe disruption of the function of the entire digestive tract, followed by an organic disease.
If psychoemotional stress occurs repeatedly during the vigorous activity of the cardiovascular system, serious cardiovascular disease may occur. If an unhealthy situation is created in the work collective, say, the boss will have a heartbeat when approaching the boss’s office, “like after a ten-kilometer run”. And if with such an excited work of the cardiovascular system there will be psychoemotional stress, this will inevitably affect the function of the cardiovascular system. With repeated stress in a similar situation, a serious illness occurs in the form of angina, heart attack or hypertension.
Great importance on the strength of the impact of psychoemotional stress is played by the psychological mood of a person, under which stress occurs.
If a person, already going to work, thinks about her with an unpleasant feeling, if at one thought about his colleagues painfully contracts his heart, in these cases stress will have a stronger impact than on a person going to work as a holiday.