[Stress, adaptation, and self-organization: balancing processes facilitate health and survival].

Background: Stress is of growing significance not only in established industrial countries. Preventive medical aspects are becoming important in association with the stress phenomenon.

Objective: Discussing the correlation between stress and health (or disease). Does a state of dynamic balance play a role in the context of stress, allostasis, adaptation, and self-organization? What kind of influence do balancing processes have on health and survival?

Results: Stress itself is neither harmful nor healthy. Instead, it represents a fundamental biological principle that is associated with vivacity and that facilitates adaptation, dynamic balance, self-organization, and survival within a constantly changing environment. Stress may also be of significance for biological evolution. A crucial part of the physiological concept is the autoregulatory stress response. Thereby, stress may enhance biological creativity and health, but may also lead to allostatic load and disease. Not only exogenous stressors, but also the subject itself decide upon the individual stress outcome.

Conclusions: Dynamic balances characterize life and survival. Further, they are crucial for health processes. Stress may facilitate a 'healthy' balance or enhance disease processes likewise. Hence, the subjective inner structure or self-organization of an organism determines--in addition to exogenous factors--individual consequences of stress. Therefore, prevention should strengthen the subject and amplify self-capacity and responsibility. Professional stress-management strategies or integrative/mind-body medical programs may be helpful.