General Adaptation Syndrome | Vibepedia

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) is a model describing the physiological changes experienced by an organism in response to prolonged stress. This syndrome highlights how the body mobilizes its resources to cope with stressors, but also how sustained activation can lead to detrimental health outcomes, including organ damage and disease. Selye's groundbreaking work, largely based on experiments with laboratory rats, revealed that the body's response to diverse stressors—be it physical injury, extreme temperatures, or psychological trauma—followed a remarkably consistent pattern, fundamentally altering our understanding of stress and disease.