What is causing the feeling around your stomach that happens when cringing or stressing out?
In: Biology
What you’re essentially describing is the physical response to what your body interprets as a stressful situation, or what we commonly refer to as anxiety.
Lots of things are happening here, and we don’t exactly know what causes that feeling, but the current working theory is it’s a decrease in blood flow to your stomach & organs surrounding such.
This happens because, if you’re running from a predator, your muscles, heart, and brain need all the oxygen & nutrients they can get. So, your body diverts the blood from unimportant organs in that moment, such as the stomach/intestines/liver etc. This is, we think, what is responsible for that feeling of “butterflies”.
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