Stress
Stress is the body’s response to physical and psychological demands. Your body’s reaction to stress includes releasing chemical hormones (such as adrenaline) into the blood and increasing metabolism to provide more energy to the muscles.
Blood sugar, heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, and perspiration all increase from stress. Use the term “stressor” to describe an element that causes an individual to experience stress.
Examples of stressors include physical stress (noise or vibration), physiological stress (fatigue), and psychological stress (difficult work or personal situations).
Stress falls into two broad categories, acute (short term) and chronic (long term). Acute stress involves an immediate threat you perceive as danger. This is the type of stress triggers a “fight or flight” response in an individual, whether the threat is real or imagined. Normally, a healthy person can cope with acute stress and prevent stress overload. However, ongoing acute stress can develop into chronic stress.
You define chronic stress as a level of stress that presents an intolerable burden, exceeds the ability of an individual to cope and causes individuals performance to fall sharply.
Continuous psychological pressures, like loneliness, work, financial worries and relationships problems produce a cumulative level of stress which exceeds a person’s ability to cope with the situation.
When stress reaches these levels, performance falls off rapidly. Pilots experiencing this level of stress are not safe and should not exercise their airman privileges. Pilots who suspect they are suffering from chronic stress should consult a physician.
