View clinical trials related to Stress Physiology.
Filter by:The goal of this observational study is to learn about the relationship between environmental structural racism and discrimination and chronic pain risk in Native American adults. The main questions it aims to answer are: 1. How does environmental structural racism and discrimination affect chronic pain-promoting mechanisms in Native Americans? 2. What psychosocial factors buffer the negative effects of environmental structural racism and discrimination on chronic pain-promoting mechanisms?
Research has shown that activation of the sympathetic nervous system for extended periods or during certain times in life can increase the risk for Alzheimer's disease. Some research in animal models show that acute activation of the sympathetic nervous system through stress exposure can increase certain Alzheimer's disease-related biomarkers, such as amyloid-beta, within hours of exposure. However, how acute sympathetic nervous system activation via stress exposure affects amyloid-beta levels in humans has yet to be examined. In this study, the investigators will examine whether brief increases in sympathetic activation result in immediate changes in plasma amyloid-beta levels in the five hours after exposure.
Emerging evidence supports the existence of a microbiota-gut-brain axis through which gut microbes influence cognition, mood and behavior. Targeting this axis with probiotics and/or prebiotics may provide novel strategies for mitigating stress-induced decrements in gastrointestinal and cognitive function. This double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized, parallel-arm trial will determine the effects of a prebiotic and a probiotic dietary intervention on gastrointestinal, cognitive and physiologic responses to acute military-relevant physical and cognitive stress. Healthy men and women will be recruited and randomized to receive a placebo, probiotic or prebiotic for 4wk. Volunteers will be fed a controlled diet during the 4th week of supplementation. Fecal, blood, urine and saliva samples will be collected. Physical stress will be induced by a weighted walk on a treadmill, and will be followed by a cognitively challenging testing scenario that uses intermittent electric shocks to the abdomen to induce a stress response.
Stress is important for health. As emergency departments (EDs) are often stressful places, a better understanding of the human stress response is important for understanding how and why patients respond as they do when they come to the ED. Since the investigators cannot take up space in the ED for research, the investigators will instead recruit 20 methamphetamine-using participants who are not currently in treatment and 10 healthy adult matched participants to a simulated ED room in the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Simulation Center. The investigators will have participants perform a stressor task involving public speaking and a simple arithmetic task. The investigators will see if this experiment can be made to be like being in an actual ED by varying what participants speak about in the task. By doing this, the investigators hope to find out several important things: 1) Is a stressor task feasible and acceptable to participants? 2) What does the stress response -- as measured by cortisol and alpha-amylase -- look like in these participants? 3) Does varying what participants talk about make the experiment seem more like an actual ED? 4) Do participants under stress show even mild symptoms of agitation as measured by clinical scales? If so, how often?