What is the scientific explanation as to why you can “feel your chest and stomach tighten” when your feelings are hurt?
In: Biology
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You know when you fill your car tires with air and they get harder? Or when a balloon gets old it’s a lot easier to poke your finger into it.
When you have a stress response, your body releases chemicals into your bloodstream. These increase your blood pressure which makes your blood vessels just a bit “stiffer” like a filled balloons/tires and you can feel that. You can also probably feel yourself getting warmer for similar reasons. Your stomach and nearby organs are part of a nerve system responsible for digesting the food you eat, and these power down and divert blood flow to other places when this happens – so you feel it most in those places.
The purpose is from olden times when the stress would come from a lion roaring at you, and you needed the extra energy/pressure to be able to respond quickly and run faster (or fight better if you couldn’t run). Now when it happens because someone was calling you names, it is just a feeling.
If it happens too often or for too long, it can be damaging. (Imagine poking a balloon until it gets a tear.) If you’re going through a rough emotional time, it can be very helpful for your body if you take some time a few times a week to go for walks, runs, or pick up a sport or something to clear out this extra energy.
Part of this is the hormone cortisol being dumped into your system in response to the emotional shock. Your brain feels threatened, so it revs up the body in case you need to fight, or run away. I’m sure it’s more complicated than just that, though.
Broken Heart Syndrome, also called stress-induced cardiomyopathy or takotsubo cardiomyopathy.
Your wrong from experience, i learnt that good things happen to good people maybe because you have a gut feeling i dont know. I can preferable think that this signaffies that your under stress, only way out of that feeling is reverse psychology. I guess i need to live a better way of life, hey do good things do come to people that wait?
U/indecisive_maybe has a great answer so I’m gonna talk about the basic physiology behind it. What this is is Fight or Flight response, or the sympathetic response. On the opposite side, you have the Rest and Digest response, or the parasympathetic. Both of these are caused by external and internal stimuli, both conscious and subconscious perceptions. As stated above, the old times usefulness was for danger out in the wild. When your body sense danger, it shuts down the parasympathetic system, which controls your gut. Catecholamines like epinephrine and norepinephrine rush into the blood vessels. This raises blood pressure and quickens the heart rate. Your pupils dilate, which allows more light in to your eyes. Your gut shuts down, because if you’re fighting a lion, the last thing you want to do is have the urge to evacuate your bowels. Cortisol levels rise, which helps with attention and being awake. There’s more that happens, but this is just basic. Once everything is over, cortisol levels drop. Epi and norepi get pulled from the blood vessels. Blood pressure and heart rate drop to normal. Pupils constrict to a normal size. The stomach and intestines go back to normal function.
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