Hans selye stress definition
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The relationship between stress and disease is now well established, but was not always recognised. The word ‘stress’ is used in physics to refer to the interaction between a force and the resistance to counter that force, and it was Hans Selye who first incorporated this term into the medical lexicon to describe the “nonspecific response of the body to any demand “. Selye, who is known as the ‘father of stress research’, disavowed the study of specific disease signs and symptoms, unlike others before him, and instead focused on universal patient reactions to illness. His concept of stress impacted scientific and lay communities alike, in fields as diverse as endocrinology, complementary medicine, animal breeding and social psychology.
TRADITION OF EXCELLENCE
Selye was born in Vienna on 26 January, 1907. His father, Hugo Selye, was a surgeon colonel in the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Army who later started his own surgical clinic. His mother, who administrated the clinic, had a strong influence on the boy with her constant quest for excellence and intellectual sophistication
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Introduced the concept of stress to medical research and treatment
The father of biological stress research
Dr. Selye’s initial discovery of the stress syndrome was based on the demonstration that the body nonspecifically responded in virtually the same way to various innocuous stimuli or stressors. During his medical studies, he had previously observed that patients with various illnesses appeared to display the syndrome of being sick. One of his greatest contributions was the demonstration of the stress triad (gastrointestinal ulceration, thymico-lymphatic atrophy and adrenal hypertrophy) and of the role of the hypothalamus in stimulating the hypophysis, which induced the adrenals to produce corticoids. These descriptions led to the discovery of the steroids ACTH, GRH, somatostatin and other hypothalamic and hypophyseal releasing factors and hormones. Collectively these discoveries described the body’s internal stress-processing mechanism.
Key Facts
Revolutionized our understanding of the causes and mechanisms of disease with his theories on the roles of
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Hans Selye
Date of issue: January 17, 2000
Printer: Ashton-Potter Canada
Series: The Millennium Collection, Medical Innovators
Design: Stéphane Huot; based on a photograph from Fondation Hans Selye
Hans Selye
Hans Selye was born in Vienna in 1907. He graduated from the German University of Prague in 1929 with degrees in medicine and organic chemistry. In 1932, he moved to Montreal to work in McGill’s Department of Biochemistry, where he began research into the biochemical and physiological components of the body’s reaction to stress. This led to the development of his concept of the general adaptation syndrome. According to this, an animal experiencing a stressful situation undergoes three reactions: an initial alarm phase, a stage of resistance or adaptation, and finally a stage of exhaustion or, if the stress is severe enough, death.
Selye later joined the Université de Montréal as a professor and founded the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery, where he held the position of Director until 1977. Over the course of his career, he published hundreds of sci
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