Antiaging Dock: Evaluation of Psychosomatic Stress

The examination items of the anti-aging dock are broadly divided into “degree of aging” and “aging risk factors.” Biological aging is a unidirectional and inevitable phenomenon, but its speed is not uniform in all humans and is considered to be elastic [1]. In other words, the degree of aging is regulated by genes, exposure to stressors, and their interactions, and is particularly thought to depend heavily on exposure to stressors. It has become clear that the overactivity of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, a major neuroendocrine response mediating stress responses, contributes to the deterioration of nerve cells and peripheral nerves with aging, and exposure to stressors may accelerate aging [2]. In other words, chronic high-stress conditions are one of the aging risk factors. Stressors in humans can be replaced with life/environmental factors that evoke stress responses, and include not only physical stressors such as the natural environment, but also psychosocial stressors that occur in interpersonal relationships. This section provides an overview of the psychosomatic stress response caused by exposure to stressors from the perspective of HPA axis activity, and discusses psychosocial stressors and psychological stress theory, stress-level evaluation scales, and biomarkers of psychosomatic stress.