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 The history of man on Earth has several million years, of which the period of civilization covers only a little more than 10 thousand years.
Until now, anthropological scientists around the world are arguing about where the "cradle of mankind" was, where the very first human populations arose. But it is clear that man as a biological species was fully formed by the end of the prehistoric period.
Further changes in the human body that took place during the era of its rapid dispersal across the planet were associated with the formation of human races, adaptation to a new geographic environment and were purely external in nature, without affecting deep physiological processes.
These fundamental foundations include functional systems designed to provide the necessary human response to the impact of the external environment. For example, you came out of the heat into frost - the body reacts to a change in temperature: metabolic processes are accelerated, muscle tone increases, leading the body to a state of mobilization. You shrink, speed up your steps - and you have warmed up, which means you have adapted to the Impact of cold. Suddenly another danger arose. The mobilization mechanism turns on again: metabolic processes increase, pulse quickens, muscle tone increases, attention is concentrated - you are ready to fight back.
Such a universal defense mechanism has developed in the course of evolution to protect and preserve the species. Individuals unable to adequately respond to external influences were doomed to death.
Any external effect on the body that requires an adequate response by mobilizing certain protective forces is usually called stress.... Hunger, danger of attack, natural disasters - these are the sources of stressful situations for the animal world, of which primitive Man was an integral part. The response to such stresses was invariably muscular action: to run away from danger or catch up with the enemy, prey, defeat the enemy in a fight, etc.
Thus, a mechanism was developed that works according to the principle stress - physical activity... This rule can be likened to a yoke, which performs its function only when it is in equilibrium. In the course of evolution, which lasted for millions of years, changes in the human body were extremely slow.
But the social development of society is incredibly fast, unleashing an avalanche of unfamiliar influences on the human body, and not only positive ones. In the social life of a person with the development of civilization, more and more new factors appear: the improvement of means of communication leads to a sharp acceleration of the pace of life; demographic processes complicate the relationship between social groups and within each society, in the family; increasing urbanization is increasingly alienating a person from the natural environment, often leading him to conflict with it. A lot of harmful substances enter our body as a result of technological activities, for example, due to the use of chemicals. Thus, in a very short period of historical development, modern man found himself in an environment saturated with stressful factors.
 If, for clarity, the development of evolutionary and historical processes is graphically represented, then evolutionary processes would have a very small amplitude at colossal periods of fluctuations, and historical ones, on the contrary, would have huge bursts at very small periods. Within this time frame, the human body does not have time to adapt to changes in the social sphere.
The reactive capabilities of a person, designed to protect him in any conditions of existence, have hardly changed.Muscle work remains the most effective defense against stress.
Recall that primitive man and man in the early stages of civilization had the opportunity to fully compensate for the effects of stress, since hard physical labor played a dominant role in their lives. Even before our era, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle warned: "Nothing depletes and destroys the human body like prolonged physical inactivity".
With the development of civilization, the way of life and the nature of human labor changed dramatically. The increase in labor intensity occurs due to the introduction of new techniques and technologies, which almost completely exclude the physical efforts of the employee. Nowadays, the work of the operator comes to the fore - sedentary with prolonged nervous tension and great responsibility. Due to this, the emotional saturation of work is sharply increased.
After work, during the rest period, the same immobility in conditions of domestic comfort and the absence of suitable conditions for physical relaxation. The worst enemy of physical well-being was the many hours of vigil TV.
To this should be added today the effect of negative stresses accompanying our social life, especially intensified in recent years. They are provoked by a crisis - in the economy, a decline in living standards, a rapid deterioration of the ecological situation in the country, a threat AIDS, the growth of other mass pathologies, including such formidable ones as paralysis, the growth of nervous and mental disorders. A number of other factors can be added to the above, all of which forms the emotional background of our life today.
So it turns out that modern man lives in a state of uncompensated stress. The increasingly spreading so-called psychosomatic diseases, or neurotic disorders associated with the breakdown of the adaptive systems of the body: sleep disturbance, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, gastric ulcer and duodenal ulcer, cerebrovascular accident and others, have become sad consequences of this. In the most complicated cases, heart attacks, strokes occur, people suffer from allergies ...
Could it be that the reason for such disruptions is the insufficient adaptation mechanisms we have? Modern science doesn't think so. Most researchers are sure: each person is in states to compensate for the lack of physical effort with other types of load - physical education, sports in combination with other equally important components of a healthy lifestyle, which include a work and rest regime, rational balanced diet and so on. The concept of "healthy lifestyle" may seem elementary only at first glance. Eat in moderation, work reasonably, have an active rest - everything is simple ... Alas, in order for the routine of work and rest to be as useful as possible, it must be individual, taking into account the gender, age, profession of a person, his personality as a whole.
There are significant differences in the recommendations on the formation of a healthy lifestyle for people who are physically healthy and with somatic or endocrine pathologies, as well as other disabled people. Unfortunately, today it is necessary to design a colossal increase in the number of disabled people on our planet - it has already reached 600 million people. This growth is associated with the deterioration of the general environmental situation, as well as catastrophes and natural disasters. All these people require the attention and participation of civilized humanity.
The latest research has shown that there are people with different types of functioning (response) of the nervous system, which is primarily associated with neuroendocrine differences. The creation of a generalized "bioportrait" allows predicting human behavior and its capabilities.
V.N.Vasiliev - Health and stress
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