– What is the feeling of your blood running cold when you get a scare watching a horror movie?
In: 0
It’s a fight or flight response to perceived danger. From an r/askscience response:
When you are acutely stressed your body secretes epinephrine, which activates the sympathetic nervous system that drives the “fight or flight” response.
Part of that response includes shunting of blood away from unnecessary systems to your muscles, lungs, brain, and eyes to help keep you alive in case of a fight or needing to run away. One of these systems that gets less perfusion is your skin, so you may feel cold from the loss of blood flow keeping it warm. The digestive tract also has blood shunted away from it, and it stops moving and digesting food as quickly, so you feel an unusual sensation in your belly.
Latest Answers