Are you Stressed?

- lot more things are going on in your body

Fighting the enemy or fleeing the scene certainly were of big-time help to us a couple million years ago. But saber tooth tigers are not our threats anymore. Hitting our kids or hiding from our bosses aren't the smartest ways to deal with our stress at home and at work; but isn't that exactly what our bodies tell us to do when we get stressed?

What happens to us when we get stressed? What about when we are chronically stressed? Isn't whatever that happens supposed to be part of Nature, and thus harmless? Or could it be harmful? Can we do something about it? This write-up is about trying to answer these questions.

I have always been interested in the dynamics of Fear and how it works on us, but when I bumped into this book 'Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers' by Robert Sapolsky, I was more than just intrigued. The core of Sapolsky's work and this book lies in exploring the ill effects of stress and how we are not 'designed' for prolonged exposure to stress. This write-up is my trial to condense that book (however impossible) into a blog-post sized version.

The Human Stress Response - Is it one of God's flaws?
Though stress is one of the major killers of humans today, it is not really a bad thing to have and it is definitely not something we have in us for no reason. But the problem lies in how it works. In short, we can even say that our body physiology is kind of dumb when it comes to handling a stressful situation. For example, think about the moment when you just realized that you forgot to file your taxes and the deadline is today. To our bodies, this situation is not very different from standing right in front of a saber tooth tiger that is ready to pounce on us. It is true that saber tooth tigers are extinct, long gone and the wild animals that are left are hardly direct threats to us anymore. But our bodies did not have enough time to 'update' the way they respond to our stressful situations. In other words, our bodies don't understand that unfiled taxes is not really a possibility for immediate death and what they do is react with the same stress response.

So what is this Stress Response?
What exactly do our bodies do when we realize that the tax-filing deadline is today? Well, a lot of things. Mainly everything that is required to handle the saber tooth situation. Let us try listing some of them out:

• Increase Heart Rate - One of the main goals is to deliver glucose and oxygen to the muscles that will run or fight. And blood is the key medium to do the delivery. So speeding up it's flow becomes a priority.
• Increase Breathing Rate - More than normal oxygen is needed for the upcoming physical activity so more than normal breathing is needed.
• Stop Kidney Function - Blood needs to be dilute to flow faster to the fight/flight muscles. We can't afford kidneys extracting water from it.
• Urinate - Kidneys are unidirectional dialysis membranes so the body cannot get the water that is already extracted back into the bloodstream so a kidney that is full is just dead weight that would make sprinting difficult. So that's where 'wetting our pants' when scared comes from.
• Expand blood vessels in key muscles (legs and arms) - More glucose needs more blood.
• Contract blood vessels in palms and feet - There is a higher possibility of getting hurt in our digits and thus losing blood in these areas; so can't afford to keep a lot of blood here. Remember your palms and feet getting cold while entering the examination hall?
• Secrete Pain Killers - In case we get hurt, we can't afford the pain disturbing our running or fighting.
• Retrieve Stored Energy - If there is something that is needed the most, it is glucose, but there is no time for the usual route (eating digesting etc.). So the solution is liquefying our assets, breaking the piggy bank, using up the fat cells and getting more glucose right now.
• Stop Storing Energy - If the pancreas keeps secreting insulin to store away the available glucose, its not really a good thing. So stop the pancreas and stop the insulin flow.
• Stop Digestion - Digestion takes blood (blood vessels expand in the intestine area to load up the nutrients in it) but there is now a more important use for blood (arms and legs).
• Stop Hunger - Apparently not becoming someone's lunch is more important than having dinner.
• Stop Reproductive Functions (Female) - Irregular cycles during stressful times? It is just your body optimizing on energy usage. Ovulation takes energy but you need it for your muscles now.
• Stop Reproductive Functions (Male) - Wondered how performance anxiety worked? this is how: Dude gets tensed doubting if he would be able to perform, body reacts with stress response and does everything in this list including stopping blood flow to his thing and there goes his erection. And also on a macro level, body stops sperm production. Live first reproduce later.
• Stop Immune System Functions - Obviously, a little bacteria in the blood stream is a smaller threat than the saber tooth tiger. So do you know people that catch the cold more often than others? Are they usually more stressed than others?
• Diarrhea - Dead weight alert in the bowel and large intestine. Get it out, Run, Live to eat later.

and the list goes on..

Remember we started this list on a note that we can call our bodies kind of dumb when it comes to responding to stress? That is because, irrespective of the stressor, our stress response is the same (which is basically everything that is listed above). It doesn't matter if we are injured, starving, too hot, too cold, physically stressed, psychologically stressed or experiencing any form of fear; our bodies promptly respond with everything in the list above. It is more like emergency response dispatch sending the cops, a fire truck and an ambulance no matter what the 911 call is about - the 'just in case' strategy. It sure seems dumb but not when we let it work how it is supposed to work.

There are two assumptions our bodies make while responding to stressful situations. It is important for us to get aware of these:
Assumption1: Stressful situations happen only once in a blue moon.
Assumption2: The effects created by these responses will be 'resolved' by us by following it up with some kind of vigorous physical activity like fighting or fleeing.

In other words, sitting on the couch every evening and worrying about that unfiled taxes is not really a smart thing to do.

So.. What Now?
Our bodies cannot take us getting stressed everyday (especially if we don't exercise enough). The list of responses above have direct effects that affect our bodies in the long run. These vary from heart-attacks to ulcers to diabetes - a wide range of dysfunctions or ailments that can be attributed to prolonged exposures to each of those responses listed above. More here.

And.. What can we do about it?
Well, we are surrounded by a lot of relaxation techniques.. maybe we could start practicing them. Here are some :)