The Fight and the Flight

Recently I finished a Stress Management class for my B.S degree in Sports Medicine and Fitness Technology.  By far my favorite class since going back to school.  Man did I learn a lot from it!! A lot of it just made sense.  Do you ever hear something, and think to yourself, "I don't know if that's true or not, but it makes complete sense"?  That was me with some of the things I learned about stress and how to manage it.

I chose to write about stress because not only is it abundant in everyday life and everyone could know more about it, but it also goes hand in hand with the whole Paleo thing and how human being should be living, the prescribed human was of living.  Did I lose anyone there?  Don't worry, I'm going to tie it all together.  So the whole idea of the Paleo diet is to basically mimic the best we can the way our hunter gatherer ancestors ate, and the whole idea behind stress dates back to our hunter gatherer ancestors as well.  I'll refer to the hunter gatherer throughout the blog as HG.  Believe it or not the HG had stress too.  How?! How could they have had any stress?  No bills, no bosses, no traffic.  All of this is true, these are things that we deal with on a daily basis.  The HG did have something to deal with every day that is far more important that bills, work and traffic.  It's called survival.  They had to find food, find shelter and not get eaten by predators.  I would say that's pretty stressful.

I'm about to drop a little physiology knowledge on you, just stay with me.  When the stress response in initiated, immediate and powerful changes come about because the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is activated.  The ANS is responsible for many functions in the body that typically occur involuntarily, such as digestion, heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature.  The activity of the ANS primarily takes place beyond our conscious control.  The ANS is then broken down into two branches which control the fight or flight response.  The sympathetic nervous system initiates the fight or flight response each time we have a thought of potential or actual danger.  The second branch, the parasympathetic nervous system, brings the body back to a state of homeostasis, or balance after the potential or actual threat or danger is no longer perceived imminent.

The ANS is controlled by the hypothalamus, located in the brain.  When the hypothalamus receives messages of perceived threats it then sends messages to the endocrine system and tells the body to release the stress hormones epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine and cortisol.  The first hormones come from the adrenal gland (located on top of the kidneys) and cortisol is released from the adrenal cortex which is part of the adrenal glands.  Together, these hormones flood every cell in the body with a specific message to prepare to fight or flight.  Alright, enough of all of that, just remember stress = body release the three hormones to prepare the fight or flight response.

The term "fight or flight" was coined by Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon and it's designed to do one thing and one thing only, help us survive.  This is a powerful and useful response in the short term, but in the long term in can produce serious problems.  Below is a picture of how fight or flight works and it's called the general adaptation syndrome.

So the HG would perceive a threat and then would either fight or run, once they fought and killed the threat or ran away from it, eventually exhaustion sets in.  Have you ever seen those news clips of a mother's ability to show almost impossible feats of strength when their child is in danger?  That'a the general adaptation syndrome.  When we use this system, our body releases the stress hormones and then our body uses them to fight or flight.  This is good and how the body is supposed to work.  

Here's there problem though, it's 2011 and finding food, shelter or worry about being eaten is not in our every day life, but guess what?  Our bodies react the same way as that caveman running for his life from the sabertooth tiger.  We fall behind on bills, deadline for work project is tomorrow, OH MY GOD!!  IT'S SOOO STRESSFUL!!!  Your body is realeasing adrenaline, norepinephrine and cortisol, but what are you doing to use it?  Your not fighting your boss to the death, your not running home when the traffic gets too bad.  So the stress hormones just stay in your body.  See that picture just two paragraphs up?  Your body stays in phase 2 and you never exhaust the body because the stress hormones don't get used.  Eventually you build up enough cortisol that you become sick, literally.  You get that cold that you just can't kick, the sinus infection that never goes away.  You get the headaches, the migraines, the muscles tension and lower back issues.  Eventually, you get cancer, cardiovascular disease and emotional disorders.  All because of bills, work whatever other stressors you have in your life.  

So what can we do about it?  Be sure to check in Thursday next week to find out what you can do.  I have some really cool and interesting things to share.