Of body and mind: If breathing helps cope with stress, does impaired breathing promote anxiety?

摘要

Stress is part of modern life. Whether real or perceived, challenging situations trigger brilliantly orchestrated neuroendocrine responses aiming to prepare the organism to face (or escape) the threat. In the short term, the release of stress hormones is a highly adaptive response that helps maintain homeostasis. Cortisol (in humans) or corticosterone (in rodents) are key effectors in this process owing to their ability to elicit rapid responses (via membrane receptors) or act as potent transcription factors capable of modulating gene expression. As such, these hormones can induce plasticity and thus alter physiology in many ways. When stress persists, however, chronic elevation of these steroids can have encompassing and deleterious effects on health. Neuroscientists have explored this notion for decades (Lupien et al. 2009), and we now know that chronic elevation of cortisol is closely associated with major depression (Zunszain et al. 2011). Previously in Experimental Physiology, Scheuer (2010) had discussed how stress hormones can interfere with the neural circuits regulating blood pressure and increase the incidence of hypertension and other manifestations of cardiovascular disease.