Running from Bears
(Page 2 of 3)
February/March 2005
By John Titan
What has just happened is that your body has quickly and efficiently directed its resources to where they are most needed: Your lungs rapidly take in oxygen and blood is pumped to your largest muscles, while other body functions — such as your digestive function — slow down to help conserve energy that is needed elsewhere. Additionally, your body is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol, two sympathetic hormones that enhance speed and reaction acuity. Mammals that exhibit these traits are more capable of surviving the dangers of the wild. Those that lack these mechanisms are more likely to be eaten. As a result, these successful survival traits have been passed down the genetic line.
RELATED CONTENT
VA to make it easier for vets to qualify for combat stress compensation...
In addition to being more physically fit, people who exercise regularly tend to be happier and less...
New research is proving that exercise is as healthy for the mind as it is for the body....
Country Lore: If youre going to be out in the heat, bring along some plain water and tomato juice...
Perceived Bears
These days, stress usually is not a signal that we are facing immediate threats to life and limb, but our bodies are still reacting as though we were in true peril. When you watch a horror movie, your heart rate goes up and your blood pressure rises even though the threat is imaginary. Your body reacts to the imagined danger when you feel stressed.
However, the modern pressures we face, while not usually life-threatening, are more or less constant. When we go through life feeling constant stress, our bodies never get a chance to go into relaxation mode, or the parasympathetic mode, which causes a lowered heart rate, lowered blood pressure, deeper breathing, improved digestive function and better circulation to our extremities. What’s more, when our bodies are operating in the parasympathetic mode, our systems are flooded with the compounds relaxin and serotonin. These hormones not only help us feel calm and give us a sense of well being, but also counteract the sympathetic hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which damage the body when you spend too much time in a stressed state. Although sympathetic hormones are useful in a “fight-or-flight” situation, they produce within us something like a turbocharged mode of operation. A machine constantly running in this fashion would soon begin to fail.
Relaxation Responses
Many methods can help people effectively cope with stress, ranging from eating a healthier diet and getting more exercise to learning to be more assertive in stressful situations. But perhaps most important is learning to relax, which will turn on the parasympathetic mode of your autonomic nervous system. How do you relax? I have found that two methods seem to work especially well.
