After an adrenaline rush, why do humans experience a sudden severe drop in energy? Would this not be disadvantageous for primitive survival?
In: Biology
It would be disadvantageous, but consider the timeline:
You’re confronted with something that you identify as posing serious threat to your safety — be it losing control of a vehicle in the snow or pursued by a predator. Your body dumps adrenaline into your system which temporarily gives you a dramatic boost to your reflexes, stamina, and strength. This is the “fight” in the “fight or flight” reaction.
But you have to understand that the rest of the time, your own brain limits your body in what it can do so you don’t hurt yourself. Your body is far more capable than you know, but if you were to use that full extent all the time, you’d cause permanent damage to your joints, ligaments, etc, to say nothing of the fact that higher blood pressure (from increased heart rate) would take a long term toll on your body, and immune and digestive systems are suppressed during this “fight or flight” phase.
So the crash you feel is the price you’re paying for that boost that saved your life. It might put you at a disadvantage if you were confronted with another life or death situation, but the fact that it got you out of one is probably enough to genetically select for it over generations.
Edit: might as well fix those typos with the traction this is getting. Lotta people have pointed out that the “fight or flight” I refer to is a lot more nuanced than the binary representation I made. [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ervkgl/eli5_after_an_adrenaline_rush_why_do_humans/ff6znvi) comment does a good job.
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