Clinical and experimental effects of informational stress

Abstract

Under certain conditions, information may become stressful. In the initial stages of our research we found that informational stress can result in fatigue, anxiety, sleeplessness, and excitability. Later we found further symptoms, such as tachycardia, palpitations, chest pain, abdominal pain, increase or decrease of appetite, diarrhoea or constipation, muscle cramps, back pain, headache, tremor, dizziness, diaphoresis, tics, and so on. Some of these symptoms might be the result of cathecholamine increased secretion, others of a decrease of endogenous opioids. Because in the initial stage of stress analgesia may occur, we studied the clinical and experimental evolution of the pain threshold and its clinical manifestations. We found that after the initial analgesia, there follows a stage of hyperalgesia; the symptoms of this stage very much resemble those of the opioid abstinence syndrome. The evolution of this syndrome is enhanced by naloxone, an opioid antagonist, and it is attenuated by clonidine and propranolol, used in the treatment of opioid abstinence syndrome. Thus we demonstrated that in the latter stage of stress, there is diminished secretion of endogenous opioids and an acute tolerance to them.