"Stress, Adaptation, and Disease:
Allostasis and Allostatic Load." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 840(1), 1998, 33-44.
Jenelle works with Andy to understand that, externally, stress is anything that acts on or around the individual and that has the potential to disrupt their balance (homeostasis and ongoing attempts at homeostasis, namely
allostasis; Mullen, Morris, & Lord, 2017).
McEwen, Viewpoint,
Allostasis and the Epigenetics of Brain and Body Health Over the Life Course: The Brain on Stress, 74 JAMA PSYCHIATRY 551,551 (2017).
Several studies have established a relation between
allostasis and poor parenting (Mills-Koonce et al., 2009; Sturge-Apple, Skibo, Rogosch, Ignjatovic, & Heinzelman, 2011).
McEwen, "Adverse childhood experiences,
allostasis, allostatic load, and age-related disease," Physiology & Behavior, vol.
In this regard, McEwen and Seeman (1999) (cited in [52]) introduced the term
allostasis to refer to short term actions taken by the organism to adapt to the stressful situation.
Strecker, "Sleep
allostasis in chronic sleep restriction: the role of the nor-epinephrine system," Brain Research, vol.
Glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor reverses alcohol-induced
allostasis of the mesolimbic dopaminergic system: implications for alcohol reward and seeking.
In chronic stress, the brain doesn't just temporarily adapt to change, it may structurally change in response to change, meeting the definition of
allostasis. Recently an experiment done by a team from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden showed chronic stress may play a possible causal role in "thinning" areas of the human brain, including parts of the prefrontal cortex.
Sex, stress and the hippocampus:
allostasis, allostatic load and the aging process.