Good physical condition does not always help



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This good physical shape are beneficial are the few who doubt. But can physical form affect all physiological mechanisms? When healthy people are exposed to acute psychosocial stress, the disease does not seem to play a role in the physiological response of the body, ie how much the level of different hormones, as well as the pulse and blood pressure. Among other things, cortisol, a stress hormone, should also work in untrained people. This is stated in a new thesis at the University of Gothenburg.

The thesis is based on tests where about 100 people aged 20 to 50 years in good health but untrained were subjected to a physical stress test in the form of a maximum fitness test on a test cycle as well as a psychosocial stress test to study the body's response to acute stress. .

As part of the tests, a number of tests were performed to monitor the evolution of cortisol levels, pulse and blood pressure, stress hormone, among others.

– It turns out that there are big differences in how different people react to acute stress, but there is no clear correlation between fitness level and psychosocial stress test response. Nor was there any connection between how the stress test was experienced and the strength of the physiological response, she says. Elin Arvidson, the author of the thesis in a press release.

However, there was a Some links between the response to physical and psychosocial stress, that is to say that participants who received high levels of cortisol, among others, during the physical test, also received high levels during the psychosocial test.

Half of the participants underwent physical training after the first tests, three times a week for six months, while the other half continued as before. Both groups then had to repeat the tests. All participants then received a reduced response to the psychosocial test, that is to say a decrease in stress hormones and pulse and blood pressure, whether trained or not. Most likely, there was habituation to the test itself, which also shows the body's ability to adapt its response to the current situation.

The results of the thesis are important for further research in the field of stress.

– Exercise has already been shown to have significant preventive effects on stress-related mental illnesses, but this mechanism does not appear to be related to acute stress response, at least not to healthy individuals. Perhaps now is the time to look from stress hormones to other aspects in order to identify the mechanisms behind the effects of physical training on stress-related health problems, comments Elin Arvidson.

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