Stress and the Fight or Flight Response
By Carol Wiley
To understand the effects of stress on your body, you need to understand the fight or flight response. Historically, humans faced many challenges from nature, for example, lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!), not to mention other unfriendly humans. In those situations, a person had two choices: run or fight.
Nature designed the human body to prepare for action and have the best chance of survival: muscles tense; heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure all increase; the liver dumps sugar into the blood stream for energy; and adrenal glands pump adrenaline into the body.
The body also shuts down functions not needed for immediate survival, notably digestion, the kidneys, and the reproductive system.
Then after a successful fight or flight, the body pretty much returns to normal as a result of the intense physical exertion.
Most of the stresses we face today are much more subtle. But when someone yells at you or cuts you off in traffic, your body has the same fight or flight response. Because it’s not acceptable to either fight or run, your body does not as easily return to a normal state. The effects of such stresses build up, and over time your body spends more time in the hyped-up fight or flight state.
Without an outlet to reverse the effects of daily stress, stress has serious health consequences. Look again at the description of the fight or flight response, and you can see that continually being in that state can lead not only to chronically tense muscles but also to heart, blood pressure, blood sugar, digestive, kidney, or reproductive problems.
To prevent health problems, it’s important to reverse the effects of stress. Many stress management techniques are available, and it’s important that you find one or more that work for you.
One of the best stress management techniques is regular massage therapy. Massage obviously relieves tense muscles. Massage also brings about the opposite of the fight or flight response: the relaxation response, which lowers heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure and increases the blood supply to all the body’s systems.
And also remember to breathe deeply and get some exercise!
Carol Wiley, LMP, is a massage therapist in Bellevue, WA. Visit http://www.bellevuemassagetherapy.com for more information about massage, wellness, and self-care (including stretching, exercise, stress management, and more).
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carol_Wiley
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