The recent discovery of the "Stress Repair Mechanism" (SRM) enables the Unified Theory of Medicine postulated by Hans Selye. It confers cohesive theories of anesthesia, analgesia, and allostasis that enable the alteration of anesthetic technique to optimize surgical outcome. The SRM continuously maintains and repairs the vertebrate body in accord with stressful forces and stimuli. Three synergi...

Glycemic allostasis is the process by which blood glucose stabilization is achieved through the balancing of glucose consumption rate and release into the blood stream under a variety of stressors.This paper reviews findings on the dynamics of glycemic levels during mental activities on fasting in non‐alcohol users and alcohol users with different periods of abstinence. Referred articles for th...

From the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, Box 165, Rockefeller University, 1230 York Ave., New York, NY 10021, where reprint requests should be addressed to Dr. McEwen. ©1998, Massachusetts Medical Society. VER 60 years ago, Selye 1 recognized the paradox that the physiologic systems activated by stress can not only protect and restore but also damage the bod...

Home visiting is an important mechanism for minimizing the lifelong effects of early childhood adversity. To do so, it must be informed by the biology of early brain and child development. Advances in neuroscience, epigenetics, and the physiology of stress are revealing the biological mechanisms underlying well-established associations between early childhood adversity and suboptimal life-cours...

INTRODUCTION Food insecurity is a major global contributor to developmental origins of adult disease. The allostatic load of maternal food uncertainty from variable foraging demand (VFD) activates corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) without eliciting hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) activation measured on a group level. Individual homeostatic adaptations of the HPA axis may subserve second...

Recent research has focused on the role of physiological stress in species conservation and population persistence. However, it is currently unknown how much stress individuals can withstand before negative impacts on population size will be detectable. In order to generate testable predictions to address this lack, we created a set of theoretical models that incorporate current theories of how...