Timing is everything: Anticipatory stress dynamics among cortisol and blood pressure reactivity and recovery in healthy adults

Abstract

Psychological states of anticipation modulate biological stress responsivity. While researchers generally investigate how subjective distress corresponds to the magnitude of stress reactivity, physiological recovery after acute stressors must also be considered when investigating disease vulnerabilities. This study assessed whether anticipatory stress would correspond to stress reactivity and recovery of salivary cortisol and blood pressure levels in response to a well-validated psychosocial stressor. Thirty participants (63% female; mean ± SEM age 45.4 ± 2.12 years) were exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) consisting of a public speech and mental arithmetic. Ten salivary cortisol samples and systolic and diastolic blood pressure recordings were collected at time points spanning 50 min before and up to 50 min after stress exposure. These data were transformed into parameters representing stress reactivity (area under the curve) and stress recovery (percent change). The Primary Appraisal Secondary Appraisal scale assessed anticipatory stress before exposure to the TSST. Our results revealed that increased anticipatory stress predicted increased stress reactivity for cortisol (p = 0.009) but not blood pressure. For stress recovery, increased anticipatory stress predicted greater decrements of cortisol concentration (p = 0.015) and blood pressure (p = 0.039), even when controlling for total systemic “output” by incorporating baseline activity. This efficient shutdown of stress responses would have otherwise been ignored by solely investigating reactive increases. These findings underscore the importance of measuring multiple dynamic parameters such as recovery when investigating physiological stress response patterns as a function of psychosocial factors.

Keywords::

• Anticipatory stress
• Primary Appraisal Secondary Appraisal scale
• reactivity hypothesis
• social-evaluative stress
• stress recovery
• Trier Social Stress Test

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by a grant (#134254) from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to S.J.L. S.J.L. holds a Senior Investigator Chair on Gender and Mental Health from the Canadian Institute of Gender and Health. R.P.J. holds a Doctoral scholarship from the Institute of Aging of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. We would also like to thank Helen Findlay for meticulously executing our salivary assays. Thanks are also extended to the two anonymous reviewers who helped strengthen our article.

Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the paper.