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people in the stress groups have been studied on repeated occasions,
and the elevated adrenocortical hormone levels have been found to be
persistent when the stress remains unabated. But with relief of the dis
tress, substantial declines in these steroids have been observed. Similar
studies have been done for adrenaline and noradrenaline under condi
tions of emotional distress.
Thus it is clear that distress is associated with elevated blood and urin
ary levels of several adrenal hormones in both the cortex and the medulla,
and these elevated levels reflect not only increased secretory activity by
the gland, but increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system.
So an important set of brain regulatory functions acts upon the
adrenal gland, particularly through the hypothalamus and also the limbic
system. Initially, this relationship was considered quite far fetched. One
of my best mentors and a really good friend urged me not to go into
this field because he did not see any way that the hypothalamus could
influence the anterior pituitary. There were just a few nerve fibrils con
necting them; there was no rich nerve connection that could do the
job. We did not realize that the job was done by chemical messengers.
That came along later with Geoffrey Harris in England. But it was quite
counterintuitive for lots of good scientists in a variety of fields that there
would be powerful brain regulatory influences on the adrenal through
the pituitary–let alone hypothalamus-pituitary influences on the entire
endocrine system and, hence, on every cell and tissue in the body.
Elevations in both plasma and urinary adrenal compounds are regu
larly observed under very difficult circumstances, perceived by the
individual as threatening. Different people perceive different circum
stances as threatening. It is that perception of threat that matters most,
not the standardization of the external event, although some events are
so terrible that they affect everybody to some degree in a stressful way.
There is a positive correlation between the degree of distress and
the tendency toward hormone elevation. Consistent individual patterns
have been observed both in the range within which each person’s adrenal
hormone levels fluctuate under ordinary circumstances and in the extent
of adrenal response to difficult experiences. Those consistent individual
differences particularly fascinated me, and, for reasons that there is no
need to go into, had something ultimately to do with my moving from