Show Summary Details

Page of

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Psychology. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 19 April 2025

Psychological Stress and Cellular Aginglocked

Psychological Stress and Cellular Aginglocked

  • Idan ShalevIdan ShalevDepartment of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University
  • , and Waylon J. HastingsWaylon J. HastingsDepartment of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University

Summary

Stress is a multistage process during which an organism perceives, interprets, and responds to threatening environmental stimuli. Physiological activity in the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems mediates the biological stress response. Although the stress response is adaptive in the short term, exposure to severe or chronic stressors dysregulates these biological systems, promoting maladaptive physiology and an accelerated aging phenotype, including aging on the cellular level. Two structures implicated in this process of stress and cellular aging are telomeres, whose length progressively decreases with age, and mitochondria, whose respiratory activity becomes increasingly inefficient with advanced age. Stress in its various forms is suggested to influence the maintenance and stability of these structures throughout life. Elucidating the interrelated connection between telomeres and mitochondria and how different types of stressors are influencing these structures to drive the aging process is of great interest. A better understanding of this subject can inform clinical treatments and intervention efforts to reduce (or even reverse) the damaging effects of stress on the aging process.

Subjects

  • Biological Foundations of Psychology
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Health Psychology

You do not currently have access to this article

Login

Please login to access the full content.

Subscribe

Access to the full content requires a subscription