p.3-4 What is this one mysterious condition that the most different kinds of people have in common with
animals and even with individual cells, at times when much - much of anything - happens to them? What is the nature of stress?
This is a fundamental question in the life of everyone; it touches closely upon the essence of life
and disease. Understanding the mechanism of stress... can also give us
all a new way of life, a new philosophy to guide our actions in conformity with natural laws.
p.4 It would be natural to start with the discovery of stress, yet it seems as though, in a sense, man always
knew about this condition and even now still fails to grasp its essence completely.
Perhaps this is true of every fundamental concept.
p.6 It is not to see something first, but to establish solid connections between the previously known
and the hitherto unknown that constitutes the essence of scientific discovery. It is this process of tying together which
can best promote true understanding and real progress.
p.13 Walter B. Cannon, the famous Harvard physiologist, subsequently called this power to maintain constancy
in living beings homeostasis... You might roughly translate it as 'staying power.' ... Apparently, disease is not
just suffering, but a fight to maintain the homeostatic balance of our tissues, despite damage. There must be some element
of stress here
p.16 It was clear that the many features of disease which were already manifest did not interest our teacher
very much because they were 'nonspecific,' and hence 'of no use,' diagnostically, to the physician.
p.18 Surely, if it is important to find remedies which help against one disease or another, it would be
even more important to learn something about the mechanism of being sick and the means of treating this 'general syndrome
of sickness,' which is apparently superimposed upon all individual diseases!!
p.19-20 Nature - the source of all knowledge - rarely replies to questions unless they are put to
her in the form of experiments to which she can say 'yes' or 'no.' She is not loquacious; she merely nods in the
affirmative or in the negative.... Occasionally... she will silently show us a picture. But she never explains. You have to
work things out yourself first, aided only by instinct and the feeble powers of the human brain, until you can ask precise
questions, to which Nature can answer in her precise but silent sign language of nods and pictures. Understanding grows out
of a mosaic of such answers. It is up to the scientist to draw a blueprint of the questions he has to ask before the mosaic
makes sense. [JLJ - a clever and insightful explanation of the scientific method. ]
p.31 If we could prove that the organism had a general nonspecific reaction-pattern with which it could
meet damage caused by a variety of potential disease-producers, this defensive response would lend itself to a strictly objective,
truly scientific analysis. By clarifying the function of the mechanism of response through which Nature herself fights injuries
of various kinds, we might learn how to improve upon this reaction whenever it is imperfect.
p.32,33 Nowadays it is perhaps difficult to appreciate just how absurd my concept seemed to most people
before I had more facts to show that it worked... Almost none of the recognized, experienced investigators, whose
judgment one could usually trust, agreed with my views... Perhaps I had just developed a warped viewpoint. Was
I, perhaps, merely wasting my time? ... one of the most respected Canadian scientists, Sir Frederick Banting [the
discoverer of insulin, a Nobel Prize Laureate], was manifestly interested in my plans... Nothing could have done me more good!
p.35 I could find no noxious agent that did not produce the syndrome.
p.38 I called the entire nonspecific response the general adaptation syndrome, usually abbreviated
as G.A.S. This whole syndrome then evolves in time through three stages which I have just mentioned, namely: (1) the alarm
reaction (A.R.), (2) the stage of resistance (S.R.), (3) the stage of exhaustion (S.E.).
p.41 When one starts out in a research career, it is somewhat discouraging to think that,
because through so many centuries so many outstanding minds have explored the salient problems of medicine, presumably most
of the important things have already been discovered.
In talking to my students, I hear this view expressed again and again. Many beginners are also convinced
that to make really interesting discoveries today one would need vast sums of money, modern laboratories equipped with all
kinds of complicated, expensive machinery, and a large staff of highly-trained assistants.
p.42 Often it is not so much the existence of things that we do not know, or about which
we are too uncertain, that handicaps our research, but the existence of things we do know and about whose interpretation
we are quite certain - although they may turn out to be false. Lack of equipment, or even lack of knowledge, is much
less of a handicap in original research than an overabundance of useless materials or useless (and sometimes false) information
cluttering up our laboratories, our files, our desks, and our brains.
p.44 My advice to a novice scientist is to look for the mere outlines of the big things with his
fresh, untrained, but still unprejudiced mind. At a more advanced stage, one may no longer be able to see the forest
for the trees. (But by that time one will have the money to buy fancy tools and hire assistants to exploit the details.)
p.44-45 There are two ways of detecting something that no one has yet seen: one is to aim at the finest
detail by getting as close as possible with the best available analyzing instruments; the other is merely to look at things
from a new angle where they show hitherto unexposed facets. The former requires money and experience; the latter presupposes
neither; indeed, it is actually aided by simplicity, the lack of prejudice, and the absence of those established habits of
thinking which tend to come after long years of work. The G.A.S. could have been discovered during the Middle
Ages, if not earlier; its recognition did not depend upon the development of any complicated pieces of apparatus... but
merely upon an unbiased state of mind, a fresh point of view.
p.50-51 Actually, I should have called my phenomenon the 'strain reaction' and that which causes it 'stress,'
which would parallel the use of these terms in physics... I was forced to create a neologism and introduce the word stressor,
for the causative agent, into the English language, retaining stress for the resulting condition.
p.53 It is especially important to keep in mind that stress is an abstraction; it has no independent
existence. We cannot cause stress without also producing some specific actions characteristic more particularly of the agent
with which we produced it. What we actually see when something acts upon the living body is a combination of stress
and the specific actions of the agent.
p.55,63 For scientific purposes, stress is defined as the nonspecific response of the body to
any demand... The stress response is, by definition, not specific, since it can be produced by virtually any
agent.
p.56 In a nutshell, the response to stress has a tripartite mechanism, consisting of: (1) the direct effect
of the stressor upon the body; (2) internal responses which stimulate tissue defense or help to destroy damaging substances;
and (3) internal responses which cause tissue surrender by inhibiting unnecessary or excessive defense. Resistance and
adaptation depend on a proper balance of these three factors.
p.57 We have learned that stress is an inherent element of all disease. If we manage to understand more
precisely what stress really is and through what mechanism it acts, we may perhaps bring some order into our thoughts about
the nature of disease.
p.58 To begin with, we must clearly realize that stress is a condition, a state, and as such it
is imponderable, but it manifests itself by measurable changes in the organs of the body. By using these alterations
as indicators of stress, we should be able to come closer to an understanding of stress itself.
p.60 But the important thing is that all these changes are measurable manifestations of
stress, and, therefore, suitable indicators of how the various parts of the stress machine work.
p.63 Since stress is the nonspecific response of the body to any demand, everybody is always under
some degree of stress... Stress can be avoided only by dying.
p.64 I think it would be correct to say that stress is the common denominator of all adaptive
reactions in the body.
p.64 Stress is the state manifested by a specific syndrome which consists of all the nonspecifically-induced
changes within a biologic system."
p.74 For simplicity's sake, we have recently attempted to state the essence of this concept in the following
terms:
Stress is the nonspecific response of the body to any demand, whether it is caused by, or results
in, pleasant or unpleasant conditions.
p.78,79 A stressor is naturally 'that which produces stress.' ... it is also self-evident
that any one agent is more or less a stressor in proportion to the degree of its ability to produce stress, that is, nonspecific
demands and changes.
p.79 While stress is reflected by the sum of the nonspecific changes which occur in the
body at any one time, the general adaptation syndrome (or G.A.S.) encompasses all nonspecific changes as
they develop throughout time during continued exposure to a stressor. One is a snapshot, the other a motion picture
of the response to nonspecific demands.
p.82 The term adaptation energy has been coined for that which is consumed during continued
adaptive work.
p.83 Many diseases are actually not so much the direct results of some external agent (an
infection, an intoxication) as they are consequences of the body's inability to meet these agents by adequate adaptive
reactions
p.116-117 Survival depends largely upon a correct blending of attack, retreat, and standing one's
ground. To obtain the best results these three types of reaction must be perfectly coordinated, not only in time
but also in space, so as to adjust our reactions to the changing demands of the situation at various times, in various parts...
When faced with an aggressor, it is by achieving this coordination with minimal distress that an organ, an
individual, or even an entire nation can successfully defend itself.
p.140 The stressor... acts upon the target area... both directly... and indirectly
p.152 Since this general diagram attempts to illustrate the fundamental pattern of all stress situations,
the stressor is not shown as acting upon any one target area in particular. We merely indicate that, wherever it
happened to act first, it eventually produced generalized stress reactions in the whole body.
p.159 Adaptation is always a concentration of effort at the site of demand... Indeed there
is perhaps even a certain parallelism between the degree of aliveness and the extent of adaptability in every animal - in
every man.
p.162 All this suggests that an essential feature of adaptation is the confinement of stress
to the smallest area capable of meeting the requirements of a situation.
p.281-282 Great progress can be made only by ideas which are very different from those generally accepted
at the time... Very few fundamentally new ideas manage to bypass the heresy stage.
p.307 adaptability, or if we want to give it this name, 'adaptation energy,' is
a basic feature of life itself. The length of the human lifespan appears to be primarily determined by the amount
of available adaptation energy... constant exposure to any stressor will use it up.
p.309 What is adaptation energy? ... 'adaptation energy,' is a basic feature of life itself. The
length of the human lifespan appears to be primarily determined by the amount of available adaptation energy... constant exposure
to any stressor will use it up... We can observe that anything to which adaptation is possible eventually results
in exhaustion, that is, the loss of the power to resist. Just what is lost we do not know.
p.317 If we could somehow also express specific actions in terms of stress, all disease manifestations
would be reduced to a common denominator.
p.324 Any one part can stand only a limited amount of wear and tear, but if many parts are nonspecifically
affected, the total demand for adaptation adds up. That is why agents affecting many parts without specificity
in the form of their action are the most effective stressors.
p.363 We have seen that, although stress itself cannot be perceived, we can appraise it by the objectively
measurable structural and chemical changes which it produces in the body.
p.367 The most important applications of the stress concept as regards purely somatic medicine
are derived from the discovery that the body can meet various aggressions with the same adaptive defensive mechanism.
p.407-408 We have seen that stress is an essential element of all our actions, in health and in
disease. That is why we have analyzed the mechanism of stress so carefully in the preceding sections... careful study
of the condition usually reveals it to consist of...: 1. The stressor, the agent which started the trouble...
2. The defensive measures... this may be accomplished by putting up a barricade... in the path of the invading stressor
[JLJ - there is a third condition listed which does not seem applicable to game theory]
p.410 stress did not become meaningful to me until I found that it could be dissected
by modern research methods and that individual, tangible components of the stress response could be identified in... physical
terms. This is what helped me to use the concept of stress, not only for the solution of purely
medical problems, but also as a guide to the natural solution of many problems presented by everyday
life.
p.429 Apparently, there are two kinds of adaptation energy: the superficial kind, which is ready
to use, and the deeper kind, which acts as a sort of frozen reserve. When superficial adaptation energy is exhausted
during exertion, it can slowly be restored from a deeper store during rest. This gives a certain plasticity to our
resistance.
back cover The Stress of Life is completely revised, expanded, and updated to reflect two decades
of new research. This classic book on stress by the man who formulated the entire theoretical concept is unquestionably the
definitive general book on the subject.
Defined as the rate of wear and tear caused by life, stress is a new concept of mental and physical fitness.
Dr. Selye here explains how to overcome the harmful effects of stress and how to use stress
to your own advantage. He explores both biochemical and environmental facets of stress, stress and interpersonal
relations, and offers readers a better understanding of their own bodies.
This is also a dependable personal guide that tells you how to combat both physical and mental stress, how
to handle yourself during the stress of everyday life, and how your bodily changes can help you adapt to a wide variety of
situations.
Unquestionably one of the great pioneers of medicine, Dr. Hans Selye, with his famous and revolutionary
concept of stress, opened countless new avenues of medical treatment.
