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The historical development of the concept of stress modulated tissue remodeling is reviewed. Concrete new results are presented to show the following: 1) Morphological and structural remodeling of blood vessels due to change of blood pressure. 2) Remodeling of the zero-stress state of blood vessels as revealed by the change of the opening angles of the aorta due to hypertension. 3) Remodeling of mechanical properties as quantified by the change of material constants in the nonlinear constitutive equation. A unified interpretation of these remodeling processes is that a certain stress-growth law exists. I offer a simple mathematical stress-growth law for discussion.

Prior to the re-classification of anxiety disorders in DSM-III,1 few attempts were made to distinguish subgroups of patients classified under the broad umbrella of “anxiety neurosis.” The discovery that antidepressants prevent the recurrence of panic attacks without affecting anticipatory anxiety or simple phobic reactions2 led to the separation of “panic disorder” from “generalized anxiety disorder.” In a survey of our anxiety clinic population, we found that the two disorders differed in cardiopulmonary symptomatology but not in muscular, gastrointestinal or psychic symptoms.

Although there have been several reports of learned voluntary control of blood pressure in man (reviewed by Blanchard and Young, 1972), there is little information concerning the mechanism of such changes. In the experiments reported here, we have been particularly concerned to eliminate mediation of blood pressure changes occurring secondarily to alterations of breathing or muscle tension by working with paralysed patients in whom voluntary control of skeletal muscles was minimal, so that any learned blood pressure changes are likely to be produced by direct autonomic control.