After an adrenaline rush, why do humans experience a sudden severe drop in energy? Would this not be disadvantageous for primitive survival?
In: Biology
The surge in adrenaline allows a person to enter fight or flight with more power than they would normally use. The resting period afterward allows the person to conserve energy, heal injury and hide from additional threat.
People constantly in fight or flight experience some really awful physical and mental repercussions. There has to be a come down or the consequences would affect future chances for survival, including the breakdown of body and mind. CPTSD is a great explanation of this.
As I just spent last nigh in a hospital bed, I can say I very much agree with this. Yesterday while driving around with friends, being the usual reckless driver most 16 year-old males with a sports car are, I managed to damage my exhaust. I get out and begin the usual process of jacking up the car to take a look at the damage, but as I get up I turn just in time to see a big dualy Chevy coming down the road at about 25 mph. My only instinct was to jump, and upon doing so I was slammed in to and thrown about 6 feet back. I promptly shot the driver a “wtf” look and, due to the adrenaline rushing through me, got up, told the driver I was fine, sent him on his way reassuring I was not calling the cops, and walked inside the house. It wasn’t until I got up from the couch about 10 minutes later to continue working on my car that everything hit me at once and I began to lose focus, hearing, and sight. The world began to spin and the pain I felt was immeasurable. I then had my gf take me to the hospital where I spent the many following hours of the night recieving MRI’s, x-rays, and the like. The adrenaline rush caused me to think i was fine and to continue about my day, which in turn made me wait longer to seek help which in most situations could be a serious issue. Luckily I am doing just fine, only a concussion and a few bruises bones.
To build up energy for the next adrenaline rush. Your body assumes that you are safe after the rush is over, and needs to re-up it’s energy supply.
Ely actually 5:
There are two one-way highways of nerves in your body (sympathetic and parasympathetic). When a big, scary monster comes, tons of chemicals like adrenaline go down the first highway. This helps you run away or beat up the bad guy.
But after that’s done, the chemicals can’t go backwards on the highway. So the second highway sends a bunch of different chemicals like noradrenaline (inventive, right?) which help make the body normal again. Since you can only add to the situation, usually the second highway needs to flood the adrenaline with a counterpart so your body doesn’t burn itself out. That’s the noradrenaline that makes you sleepy.
Your body can only keep a rush going for so long before running out of energy. Ideally you use the adrenaline rush to kill or escape from whatever threat you encountered, and then you’re safe to relax
An adrenaline rush is literally pushing the human body’s responses into overdrive. Pain impulses are deadened, allowing the person to react faster, farther, and more forcefully to the perceived threat (this translates into higher speed, strength, and stamina during the rush). Also, neurons in the brain and certain nerve pathways fire more rapidly, which translates into the closest thing biology can call an increase of time (which heightens reaction speed). Things that don’t contribute to actual survival in the extreme immediate future get essentially turned off, including digestion and sphincter control.
This all has side effects. First of all, you caused yourself microinjuries during the adrenaline rush, and depending on what you did during the rush, you may have caused overstress injuries on a larger scale too, as bones, ligaments, tendons, and muscles were pushed beyond your day-to-day limits (just because a 90-lb granny can lift a car off a baby doesn’t mean she gets away with it scott-free). You’ve also exhausted some or all of the ready energy supplies in your bloodstream (because digestion got paused), and that needs replenishing. Oh, and your guts need to start up again. Lastly, adrenaline is long-term toxic to the body, and needs to be metabolized and removed. Recovering from the microinjuries, removing the adrenaline, and replenishing the bloodstream energy reserves makes you feel drained and you need recovery time. (the exhausted feeling is because you burned up all the energy and have an excess of what are called ‘fatigue poisons’)
As for this being disadvantageous to primitive survival, it isn’t, not really. An adrenaline rush gives you the chance to escape an immediate life-or-death situation, and most of the time, you only encounter one of those at a time. the chance of repeated or constant life-or-death situations is low enough that adrenaline rushes are something selected for in an evolutionary sense–the early animals that HAD adrenaline rushes were much more likely to survive than the ones that didn’t. (Before you ask, I said animals, because there’s a large amount of evidence to suggest adrenaline rushes predate mammals–look at birds and their panicked flight when startled, much faster than their usual speed, for an example. this suggests that it’s likely some dinosaurs also had a similar mechanism.)
Well you have the adrenaline rush until there isn’t danger anymore. When it’s finished, you calm down and need to repay your enery dept from your body.
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