Stress is a response to a threat either to life or to the loss of something that the organism considers important. So, the stress response is an essential coping mechanism, as always. It begins with an emotional event in the brain, such as fear, which then is communicated through the hypothalamus, which is the brains master gland. Its also the apex of the bodys autonomic nervous system, which is the survival nervous system, which is not under our conscious control, so its autonomous... So, the hypothalamus then sets up a a bunch of responses that ends up with the release of cortisol and adrenaline from an adrenal gland - renal means kidney, adrenal means top of the kidney. The adrenal gland puts out two hormones. One is named after it, called adrenaline. The adrenal gland has a cortex, like the brain does, cortex means bark, like the bark on a tree. So, the cortex puts out another hormone named after it called cortisol. So, we have adrenaline and cortisol, these are the stress hormones. They increase our heart rate, high blood pressure, tighten our muscles, blood flow is distributed from the intestines to the muscles, so we have more oxygen to escape or to fight. Cortisol elevates our blood sugar levels, so that we have more energy and it surpasses the inflammation that might be caused by stress. So far so good. Thats just the necessary response to a threat. However, any perception of a threat, whether youre coming at me with a knife, or whether I imagine that you have a knife in your pocket, that youre about to wield in order to hurt or kill me, Im going to be just as stressed by it. So, the stress response is to either a threat or to a perception of a threat, and of course, that means that when people are threatened a lot early in their lives, theyll tend to perceive threat even when there isnt any. So, theyll then to be more stressed. - Gabor Mate vimeo/55416414
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 12:22:10 +0000
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