The fight or flight response

If you’re walking through the jungle and you come across a lion your entire body will immediately and automatically go into survival mode.

Within a matter of moments fear of the lion causes stress which activates your fight or flight response. Adrenaline is released, your heart rate increases, your lungs expand to suck in air, your pupils dilate to take in your surroundings, glucose production is increased to give you a burst of energy, your hearing is heightened to listen for danger, blood is redirected from your skin, extremities and digestive system to your major muscle groups for fast action. You’re more aware, hypervigilant and you are either ready to attack or ready to run.

During this response your brain prioritised everything essential for survival and drew energy from everything not considered vital. Not so vital systems include the digestive and reproductive systems, tissue repair and growth hormone production. These are all temporarily slowed for the purposes of survival. Sleep is then affected because your mind is on high alert and nobody wants to sleep with a roaming lion.

Sounds a bit extreme doesn’t it? Not when you need to fight or run from a lion though!!

But what happens when your stress response, your fight or flight, is constantly activated but there is no lion? Unfortunately for our mind and bodies, our stress response can be activated through sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste. It can be activated without us even realising. It can even be activated without a lion.

Our bodies aren’t designed to live in survival mode for extended periods of time. Research suggests that repeated activation of the stress response will take its toll on the body and mind. Repeated surges of adrenaline can damage blood vessels and arteries, increase blood pressure and risk of heart attack and stroke, promotes formation of artery clogging deposits and causes brain changes that may contribute to anxiety, depression and addiction. Higher cortisol causes a build up of fat tissue and contributes to obesity.

While you shouldn’t be coming face to face with a lion anytime soon, when our minds perceive news, press conferences, number of cases, deaths, restrictions, rules as a lion.

So if you find yourself becoming anxious in the lead up to any press conferences, if hearing another new restriction causes your heart to race, if you feel fear for the future and your neck muscles tense anytime you hear the words virus, pandemic, vaccination or the death count or you shudder when you see health professionals in full PPE then then you need to turn off the tv, take some deep breaths, go outside or turn the music up or move your body.

Because sitting in this much stress IS disrupting your cells and WILL cause disease which may lead to early death. You are significant because you are and I love you because you exist.