Fight or Flight

Last time we talked about stress and started to unpack what stress really is: a biological reaction to stimuli. Or the stress response, or Fight or Flight. So what actually happens when this response gets triggered?

Let’s imagine your nervous system is like a busy 1940’s black and white movie style newspaper. Your Central Nervous System (CNS) is the like the Chief editor. He is receiving information and sending out commands, he sees all, knows all, and is in charge of all (or so he thinks).
Your Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) are the two second in command editor types. One guys is a busy body in charge of all of the moving parts of the paper, and the other guys (the Autonomic Nervous System: ANS) is kind of quiet and doing all the stuff it takes to keep a paper going; paying bills, ordering paper and ink, making sure the thermostat stays at 62 degrees, etc. Each of these gentlemen have teams working under them. Everyone is very busy doing their thing, reporting back, keeping it moving.

Your Sympathetic Nervous system works for the quiet editor. He is the guy who spends his time looking for headline news and when he sees it, he bursts into press room and screams “STOP THE PRESSES!,” at the top of his lungs, and he has a handy lever to pull that actually does stop the press and puts the breaking news guys in motion before his boss, or his boss’s boss even knows what happens.

The breaking news guys are out the door, and the presses are at a dead stop, and the front page editors are already redesigning the Headlines before the ANS editor or the CNS big boss editor even poke their heads out of their offices.
In many ways the Sympathetic Nervous system is the most important guy in the room because he has ultimate control whenever he sees fit.

In your body, the Sympathetic Nervous System has direct pathways to your major organ systems and a superhighway to them as well, so the impulse doesn’t even have to take the slower route via the Spinal Cord. It is faster than thought.

So what does the Sympathetic Nervous System tell your body to do?
Increase heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration. Release adrenaline into the system along with extra glucose. Your pupils with dilate, your sweating will increase, and your digestion will slow down and/or stop. You will also need to go to the little boy’s or girl's room.

This is a super important skill because if humans had to think through every response to danger, we wouldn’t make it. We need the reflex, and fast action of fight or flight to survive. The problem is, for most of us we have a jumpy little guy for our Sympathetic Nervous System, and our modern world has far more stimulants in it.  Back in the days of the caveman the newspaper headline would read:
SAW A BEAR!
Now a days it reads:
ALMOST HIT A SQUIRREL!
GOT A MEAN EMAIL!
LOST MY KEYS!
WATCHED C.S.I.!
FOUGHT WITH MY BOSS!
DROPPED MY PHONE IN THE TOILET!!!!!!!
JUST READ A CONFUSING BLOG ABOUT STREESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!

What used to be a one line situation is a full on page. And believe it or not each of these things causes the the Sympathetic Nervous System to kick into gear.

The antidote? Stimulating the Parasympathetic Nervous system or the guy in charge of rest and digest. Maybe he is a soothing advice columnist or the the hippie who delivers lunch but that is for next time. 

STRESS!!!!

 
AaakK! Stress!

How did it get to be October already? The lazy days of summer are all over folks, fall is technically in full swing, and the Holidays (cue scary music) are hard upon us.

As we move into the spooky season it seems like a great time to crack a scary subject. Stress. We all have it, we all talk about it, but why is it so scary? Well, because it is a mystery. We all kind of know what it means, we all kind of know that it is not so good, but for the most part we don’t really know why. For example this is a definition of stress via Wikipedia (obviously the end all be all of information, duh):

Stress typically describes a negative concept that can have an impact on one’s mental and physical well-being, but it is unclear what exactly defines stress and whether or not stress is a cause, an effect, or the process connecting the two. With organisms as complex as humans, stress can take on entirely concrete or abstract meanings with highly subjective qualities, satisfying definitions of both cause and effect in ways that can be both tangible and intangible.

Well! That sure clears that up!

So for the next few blogs, we will look at stress, what it is, what it does both bad and good (yes some stress IS good). And what you can do about it.

For now, let us frame stress as a biological reaction as opposed to an amorphous blob (IT’S THE BLOB!!! RUUUUNNN!) The Stress Response is simply what happens in your body when you react to certain stimuli. The layman’s term for the stress response is “Fight or Flight.” That’s right, every time you feel that overwhelming “I am so stressed out” feeling” it is the result of your primal self protection mechanism.

The really scary part, is that we are basically always triggering the Stress Response in our modern life. Instead of being spooked a couple of times a day by a prowling saber toothed tiger or woolly mammoth, we get a little burst of the same biological activity when someone cuts us off in traffic, or when we can’t find out keys when we are late, or when our boss gives us the stink eye when we slink into the meeting 20 minutes after it started.

Next time we will go into what is happening in your body when your Stress Response gets triggered. Until then, try to notice what happens when you get those little hits of the stress response. Instead of just giving into the feeling of “stressed out” try to pick out the physical sensations that go along with it and see if you can’t pick out some of the things that happen in your body when you start to “get stressed.”

Dr. Lou will is holding weekly Workshops, many of which focus around Stress.  This week "Emotional Stress!" on Wednesday, 10/10/12 at 6:30 pm.  Come on down, you will NOT be disappointed!