How does lifestyle contribute to stress? Evaluate recent cross-cultural research.

Stress is the response to an event, conditions, or an environment that gives ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ stimulation. It elicits a hormonal response physiologically that is aimed at dealing with the arousing stimulus, the stressor, by directing energy supplies where they are needed. Lifestyle can have a significant contribution to stress because it mediates the types and degree of stressor that a person will encounter. The term lifestyle is difficult to define but is a broad expression for a person’s ‘way of life’ that is affected by diet, occupation, social interaction, family composition, physical activity level, and also the environment where they live and work. Different aspects of a person’s lifestyle can expose them to stress such as a ‘stressful’ job and the relative instability of their situation. As stress is a reaction to unhabituated stimulus a lifestyle that exposes people to changing conditions and uncertainty can contribute to stress. This is seen in modernizing societies like those in Samoa where new urban lifestyles mean people are exposed to different stresses than in traditional rural villages due to changes in diet, occupation and where they live, these features interconnect to compound the stress problem showing that stress is caused by complex interactions not a single stressor. Social interaction can be a way of buffering stress and the effects of this can be seen in the different levels of stress between women in Samoa. Stress is also experienced by Chilean refugees who experience uncertainty about their environment and identity caused by a lifestyle relating to their exiled status. A study by Flinn shows that family composition also has a considerable contribution to stress in Caribbean children.

It is difficult to predetermine which stressors will cause a stress response in people as the perception of stressors is mediated by cultural and individual perceptions of them, therefore many studies monitor catecholamine and corticosteroid excretion to measure stress (Long et al, 1993: 73). Stressful stimuli are modulated by the limbic system and the basal ganglia, which interact with the sympathetic adrenal- medullary system (SAM) and the hypothalamic-anterior-pituitary adrenal cortex system (HPA). SAM regulates catecholamines, norepinephrine and epinephrine while HPA regulates cortisol. Cortisol is released in response to physical and psychosocial stressors it causes mental readiness for short-term demands (Flinn, 1999: 108-10). Due to humans having lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle for 99% of their existence these systems are still geared to that environment where a ‘flight-or-fight’ response was appropriate to perceived stressors. With a modern, technological lifestyle people are still exposed to stressors and in some cases the above model is relevant, but in most cases the release of adrenaline and cortisol is not necessary and unutilised free fatty acids can cause cardiovascular problems (Panter-Brick lecture notes 2001). Today’s lifestyles create stressful situations but are reacted to physiologically in ways that fit a different lifestyle.

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Modernisation has occurred among many Samoan groups; by comparing their catecholamine excretion level studies can show the stress outcomes of more modernised environments and lifestyles. The study described below showed how several interrelated factors influenced the stress level in people not just a single causal factor. A study carried out from 1981-82 looked at four different groups: rural agriculturalists, urban manual labourers, urban sedentary workers and urban students (Pearson et al, 1993: 51). These groups were chosen to maximise lifestyle difference and so show the effect of lifestyle on catecholamine levels, as related to stress. The study showed that norepinephrine levels among rural villagers were lower than the urban sedentary workers and the students (Pearson et al, 1993: 51). This shows that an urban environment was more stressful to the Samoans than a rural lifestyle. Interestingly the overnight norepinephrine levels in the urban labourers were similar to the rural village sample but similar to the other urban groups during the day. This indicates that the non-working environment of urban workers may be more traditional than those of other urban groups, while the stresses they experience during work in an urban environment are similar to those felt by all urban groups. Another study on Samoan subjects in 1986 showed that levels of norepinephrine were 30-50% higher than in the previous study this could indicate that increased modernisation between the two studies also increased stress levels (Pearson et al, 1993: 52-3). These results show that increased modernisation which is related to an increase in urban dwelling increases stress as seen from catecholamine levels increasing. The 1981 Samoan study found several correlates to catecholamine levels related to lifestyle.

Social interaction and emotional expression are lifestyle factors that can act as buffers to reduce stress. The 1986 study of Samoan women showed that in Western Samoa and Honolulu the more interaction people had the higher their epinephrine level, in the American Samoan sample more interaction meant lower epinephrine levels (Pearson et al, 1993: 54). This indicates that the way people perceive psychosocial stressors effects their response to them. American Samoan women were not as bound to household and work settings as the Western Samoan and Honolulu women, this meant they could leave the house and interact with people outside the household and village therefore their interactions were done in the pursuit of leisure whereas the other women’s interactions were confined to the household and work settings which were a source of stress so interactions within those setting were also stressful (Pearson et al, 1993: 55). Social support is also useful for alleviating stress by sharing the problem or finding a solution (McGarvey, 1999:249). Samoans are enculturated to suppress anger and it is a feature of adult social interaction. In a modern area of Samoa anger suppression among women with a low educational background who are exposed to the new economic, social and material lifestyle opportunities in those modernised areas can elevate stress and blood pressure levels. By not expressing negative emotions such as anger psychophysiological arousal is unbuffered and so causes more stress (McGarvey, 1999: 272). In this case it is exposure to another lifestyle that contributes to stress.

Another study on Samoa indicates several features of lifestyle conducive to stress. Lifestyle incongruity is the consumption of material goods, to acquire social status, that are not within one’s means. This contributes to a psychological burden due to worrying about maintaining an expensive material lifestyle. Among young Samoan men in a peri-urban village those with high levels of lifestyle incongruity had high norepinephrine and epinephrine levels (McGarvey, 1999: 249&269). This show that ‘living beyond one’s means’ is a source of stress. Status inconsistency also contributed to stress, that is where a person has an occupation that does not match their level of education. In the most modernised area of American Samoa men with managerial jobs and community responsibilities, but without a high level of education had a great deal of job-related stress and stress associated with social roles which resulted in elevated blood pressure, often recognised as a symptom of stress (McGarvey, 1999: 268). However this form of stress is not only the result of increased modernisation. Traditional cultural patterns exist in Samoa that put pressure on men to compete for social recognition, political titles and power. The modern global system gives a new expression of this cultural pattern so that high status men are encouraged to obtain a share of the USA federal and territorial resources to improve and develop infrastructure and social services (McGarvey, 1999: 268). This shows that modernisation and consumer culture add to stress which is the result of altered lifestyle patterns, but stress did exist before modernisation and modernisation should not be thought of as the only cause of stress.

Lifestyle that results from family composition can also be a contributing factor to stress among children. Flinn studied cortisol levels in saliva among children living in a rural village on the east coast of Dominica to see how family or care taking household composition influenced these levels as this hormone mediates stress (McGarvey, 1999: 112). On average the children with higher cortisol levels lived within a range of family groupings that can be viewed as less stable than a ‘normal’ family of two biological parents, such as distant relatives, step-fathers and half-siblings, and a single parent with no kin support. Children who lived with both biological parents, single mothers with kin support or grandparents had on average lower cortisol levels indicating a less stressful situation (McGarvey, 1999: 118). Interestingly step-children had higher cortisol levels than half-siblings within the same house, this indicates that it was the way the step-children were treated or the attitude towards them that caused the stress rather than the household environment itself (McGarvey, 1999: 119). Household composition is not a direct indicator of family environment and parenting style is an important feature in the stress levels of children and the personality of individual children mediates the effects of stress.

Circumstances of exile can cause a considerable amount of stress due to the adopted lifestyle of the new country. Flores-Borquez looks at the position of Chilean exiles, the stress they encounter and lifestyle strategies aimed at coping with their position. The integration of exiles into a new country is influenced by the exiles willingness to adjust to new circumstances and the attitude of the host population. Being exiled can cause stress due to culture shock, all previous frames of reference are replaced by those belonging to the host culture so that exiles feel they have no “linguistic, climatic, political, economic or gender-based” foundations on which to ground new experiences and relate to the environment around them (Flores-Borquez, 2000: 214). This effect is compounded by host countries deliberately fragmenting exiled communities so that they do not create their own communities with shared values and beliefs within the host country (Flores-Borquez, 2000: 215). Exiles are also disempowered, they no longer have the status they did before exile and they are often ascribed a negative status by the host country (Flores-Borquez, 2000: 216). These factors encourage the Chilean exiles to relive a ghostly memory of Chile, where the past was a ‘golden age’. Their lives are intrinsically bound to the events in the homeland and this prevents full assimilation into the host country (Flores-Borquez, 2000: 216-7). In the children of exiles this produces stress over uncertainty of identity as they are obliged to consider themselves Chilean because of their parents while never having been there (Flores-Borquez, 2000: 218). An exiled lifestyle leads to stress from insecurity about identity and lack of acceptance in the dominant host population.

Analysis of catecholamines can objectively measure levels of stress in individuals. Several features of lifestyle such as increased modernisation, lifestyle incongruity, social interaction and family composition can all contribute to the level of stress experienced by a person. In Samoa an urban lifestyle is shown to cause an increase in stress while rural village life is less stressful according to catecholamine levels. Variations in stress levels can be explained by a more traditional home environment among urban labourers which reduces their overnight catecholamine level. Other variations such as that between epinephrine levels in women can be explained by the perception of stimuli as a stressor or not, American Samoan women do not view social interaction as stressful and it therefore acts as a buffer to reduce stress caused by other thing. Among Caribbean children family composition and the child’s status within the family have a consequence for increased stress. In Chilean exiles their situation within the host country influences their adoption of an idealised view of their homeland which cause problems for children identifying with the host country and cause identity conflicts. These cross-cultural examples help to show that many features of lifestyle have important consequences for stress and these vary within and between cultures depending on individual and community circumstances.

Bibliography

Flinn, M ‘Family environment, stress, and health during childhood’ In Panter-Brick & Worthman (eds) ‘Hormones, Health and Behaviour: A socio-ecological and lifespan perspective’ (1999) Cambridge University Press. GB. Pg. 105-131.

Flores-Borquez, M ‘Children of protracted exile: where do they belong?’ In Panter-Brick & Smith (eds) ‘Abandoned Children’ (2000) Cambridge University Press. GB. Pg. 213-223.

Long, Ungpakorn & Harrison ‘Home-school differences in stress hormone levels in a group of Oxford primary school children’ (1993) Journal of Biosocial Science 25: 73-78.

McGarvey, S ‘Modernization, psychosocial factors, insulin and cardiovascular health’ In Panter-Brick & Worthman (eds) ‘Hormones, Health and Behaviour: A socio-ecological and lifespan perspective’ (1999) Cambridge University Press. GB. Pg. 244-275/

Pearson, James & Brown ‘Stress and changing lifestyles in the Pacific: Physiological stress responses of Samoans in rural and urban settings’ (1993) American Journal of Human Biology 5: 49-60.