Generally curious..
In: Biology
I was about to comment on why, but people here have described it all perfectly. If you want some pictures to explain it further or easier, google: sympathetic vs parasympathetic nervous system. There are great comparisons on google images and you will see and recognize the physical aspect of it all very easily. Hormones have very powerful effects on the human body. When you’re on a roller coaster for example you kind of “force” your body to release the hormones that make you enter “fight or flight”, the sympathetic nervous system. It’s very physical, even though you think it’s your brain playing tricks on you.
First of all, I know what you mean, but it’s still worth saying: psychological things are still physical since our brain is a physical organ. The fact that something is psychological does not make it any less physical or biological than something in our body.
There are a lot of scientific ideas about how exactly stress works, but the main and most popular one is that stress increases activity in something called the HPA axis (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal_axis). This is just a network of communication between the hypothalamus in our brain, the pituitary gland in our brain, and the adrenal glands on top of the kidneys.
The short summary is that stress leads our brain to release chemicals like vasopressin and corticotropin-releasing hormone. After traveling through our bloodstream from our brain to our adrenal glands, these chemicals tell the adrenal glands to release chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol. As anyone who has experienced a flight/fight/freeze response in extreme fear knows, adrenaline and cortisol both can have strong effects on the brain and body (fast breathing, fast heart rate, increased alertness, dry mouth, and other things).
The stress response is great in the right contexts since it helps us survive. However, extreme or prolonged stress can disrupt the HPA axis in a way that contributes to things like heart disease, diabetes, fatigue, immune disorders, and depression. I’d also recommend watching [this](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eYG0ZuTv5rs) video or reading the book *Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers* by Robert Sapolsky (an expert on stress in the brain) if you want to learn about the biology of stress more deeply.
When you experience stress, your body will respond by preparing for danger, it is designed to do so. It is a great system for when you think a lion may be near.
Increased cortisol heigtens your alertness, adrenaline increases heartrate. You are ready for fight or flight. You’re basically a racecar in the red. Like racecars, your body is not designed to be in the red all the time. Stuff starts breaking down after a while.
Stress *is* physical.
Oh sure it can have a psychological cause, and colloquially those might be what the word is used for, but what it actually is is a heightened state of activation of the sympathetic nervous system, the body’s fight or flight response.
High blood pressure is an intended feature of the sympathetic nervous system. It helps get blood to your muscles if you’re trying to outrun a lion.
Maintaining high blood pressure for months or years in a row isn’t great for your heart.
All the blood vessels going to your digestive system get partially shut off since really if you’re running away from a lion you don’t have time to worry about digestion right now. Do *that* for too long and your stomach lining might not be able to rebuild itself as fast as your stomach acid is dissolving it.
Brain: OMG BAD THING! I NEED TO SHUT OFF EVERYTHING BUT WHAT I NEED TO GET AWAY! (Like lizards shedding their tail.)
So just like the lizard, it takes the body time to regrow/recoup from that experience. But if that keeps happening, you don’t have time to recover, meaning your body just doesn’t have enough resources to keep going and handling the “danger” so …
– not only does it not have enough to fix anything that broke down while you were stressed
– it’s taking valuable resources from other parts that need it (like digestion) and putting it into parts (like being hyper alert) that don’t need it anymore
So remember kids, next time you feel the stress don’t just throw away your tail, look that bird in the eyes and spit poison in it’s face. Oh wait no sorry that’s for lizards again.
Just stop when you’re feeling stressed. Think about what is making you feel that way. Are you truly in danger? Will any real harm come from this? No? Then, breath, take a break and come back to it with fresh eyes.
WARNING: Any advice in this post is being given by lizard people and may not be much use in the above world.
Your brain is both very complicated (that means very hard to understand) and very simple. When you are scared it does something to help you get out of the scary situation. Your brain pushes special chemicals (that’s kinda like medicine) through your body. It let’s you run fast and think fast and be strong. That’s very helpful if it’s a bear or a bully.
But our brains aren’t used to new kinds of scary things, like scary pictures on the internet or being worried about handing in home work late or your best friend not playing with you today. Being strong or fast doesn’t help. Our brains are simple though and think that’s a threat so it gives you the special chemicals to help.
The problem is the chemicals your brain sends out is only good for a short, otherwise it is bad for your body like your heart or other inside parts. So when your feeling scared and your heart is racing try and count your breaths, that’s like the mindfulness we’ve been practising in class.
(I’m a teacher and this is pretty much how I’d explain it to my class)
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