Stress and Wound Healing

Running head: STRESS AND WOUND HEALING
STRESS AND WOUND HEALING
Name of student:
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STRESS AND WOUND HEALING
Introduction:
A large number of factors work together in determining how quickly or effectively the
body can help in healing of the wounds. Studies opine that the wound healing procedures mainly
rely on the physical condition of the individual and diabetics, smoking as well as people with
different immunological conditions often have hard time recovering from their wounds. Many
individuals often fail to identify but psychological elements also have the ability in affecting the
wound healing procedures (Badr et al., 2016). Stress is one of the most common natural reactions
that have the ability in causing detrimental effects on the healing procedures. This assignment
will mainly discuss about the ways stress had affected the wound healing in an individual called
Martha by collecting evidences from the research journals. It will also show how Martha can
manage any such wounds in the future effectively when she faces any form of such injuries as
mentioned in the case study.
Discussion:
Stress can be explained as the natural response to any forms of outside stimulus that
causes any form of agitation to an individual both mentally as well as physically. Studies
describe this as the part of fight or flight mechanism where the body is seen to secrete a boost of
hormones like that of cortisol as well as adrenaline during any tensed situations. In smaller
amounts, stress can be a life saving attribute (DuRant et al., 2016). However, in case of long term
stress or in chronic conditions, the health of the individual can be harmed. As per studies, long
term stress can result in anxiety, panic attacks, muscle soreness, insomnia as well as weakening
of the immune system. Chronic stress can be seen to cause high blood pressure that may in turn
result in various types of cardiovascular issues like that of stroke and heart attack. It had been

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STRESS AND WOUND HEALING
seen that around the weeks of the Valentine’s Day, Martha was feeling excessively stressed
because of delivering and attending the needs of the customers of her flower shops. She used to
be physically drained of her energy at the end of the day that made her feel stressed and fatigued
as well.
Studies are of the opinion that stress negatively affects wound healing procedures.
Scientists have tried to look deeper into the mecahsnisms and methods by which stress impacted
wound healing. It has been found that stress results in weakened immune system function that
affects wound healing procedures and along with that it also promotes habits that can help in
diminishing one’s health (Koschwanez et al., 2015). One of the studies has provided a detailed
cellular mechanism that takes place during wound healing steps. Glucocorticoid hormones are
seen to participate in many of the key physiological functions. Cortisol is seen to influence the
activity of the immune system by causing suppression of the cellular differentiation as well as
proliferation thereby causing down regulation of the gene transcription and reduction of the
expression of the cell adhesion molecules that are important for cell trafficking. In the presence
of this cortisol, the T cells are seen to become less responsive to the interleukin 1 (IL-1) and this
helps in signaling of the production of the growth factors which helps in facilitating T cell
proliferation (Fujiwara et al., 2017). For maintaining equilibrium, the body initiates the negative
feedback mechanism for stopping the production of the ACTH by the elevation of the cortisol.
However, in situations when the individuals are too stressed, such mechanism becomes
dysfunctional affecting the healing proves of the wounds.
Over production of catecholamines as well as cortisol as a result of the stress response
can have significant impact on the wound healing procedures as it results in alteration of the
immune system and tissue-hypoxia. One of the studies had undertaken a research about the