@nicolaromano Now I am interested! I took a quick look at the review you posted. And now I have got sucked into pituitary gland sizes....age, sex and BMI all seem to play a role - but, I can't see an effect of exercise. Is chronic subordinate colony housing the main way of inducing stress experimentally? I guess chronic stress is what I am interested in. But, I don't know what is classed as acute and chronic in this field. Would stress applied progressively over 8 weeks be classed as chronic?
@schwiening Well, the thing with stress is that are oh-so-many protocols and different subtleties on how it is applied, that sometimes it gets really tricky comparing things. In general, people will talk about "acute stress" (i.e. a one-off event) vs chronic (i.e. multiple repeated events). So, yes 8 weeks is definitely chronic. Obviously, the extent of the effects of chronic stress are also species-specific; 2 weeks might be nothing for a human but a lot for a mouse!
In laboratory settings, you also often read about homotypic vs heterotypic chronic stress; the first indicates that the same stress is repeated multiple times and the other indicates a variable, often unpredictable stress.
I think it is important to also remember that while carefully designed experiments done in a lab setting can help understand the molecular mechanisms of stress, in humans, things are way more complicated. For example, there are social components that are not negligible; you might voluntarily inflict stress on yourself by setting yourself a deadline to do something or by deciding that you are going to go to that dinner party, despite disliking half of the people there!
