Consistency in physiological stress responses and electromyographic activity during induced stress exposure in women and men

Physiological responses serve the role as objective indicators of stress as well as a link between psychosocial stress and various health outcomes. The aim of the present exposure session was to compare different physiological stress responses (systolic and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, urinary epinephrine and norepinephrine, salivary cortisol) as well as trapezius muscle activity, measured by surface electromyography, during mental and physical stress in 11 women and ten men. The results show significantly increased activity in all measures but cortisol and significant associations between sympathetic arousal and EMG activity. The association between sympathetic arousal and muscle activity is of importance for understanding the high prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders in mentally stressful but physically light work tasks. Men had higher blood pressure and a more pronounced increase in epinephrine output than women, whereas women had higher heart rate. It was concluded that sympathetic activity is more sensitive to moderately intense stress exposure than pituitary adrenocortical (cortisol) activity and that men respond to performance stress with more epinephrine output than women. Although the correlations between the different indicators of sympathetic arousal were high, together they could still only explain 30–70% of the inter-individual variance. Thus, several parameters are needed in order to obtain a reliable measure of sympathetic activity.