Your Brain's Response To Acute Stress!

 

Stress is a feeling that's created when we react to particular events. It's the body's way of rising to a challenge and preparing to meet a tough situation with focus, strength, stamina, and heightened alertness.

 

The precursors that lead to stress are referred to as stressors, and they can cover a wide range of situations; everything from outright physical danger to making a class presentation to having a bad dream.

 

Particularly in a normal working life, much of our stress is subtle and occurs without any obvious threat to our survival. Most comes from things such as work overload, conflicting priorities, inconsistent values, deadlines, conflict with others, unpleasant environments and so on. Not only do these reduce our performance as we divert mental effort into handling them, they can also cause a great deal of unhappiness. These mild levels of stress are classified as ‘acute stress’ and we all experience it in one way or another.

 

The best way to envision the effect of acute stress is to imagine yourself in a very base-level, primitive type situation, such as being chased by something in the woods.

 

In response to being chased, a part of the brain called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) system is activated.

From here there is a release of Steroidal Hormones. The HPA systems trigger the production and release of two specific hormones Glucocorticoids, which includes the primary stress hormone Cortisol. This particular hormone is very important in regulating and maintaining systems throughout the body that including the heart, lungs, circulation, metabolism, immune systems, and skin in order to quickly with stressful situations.

 

Next, we have the release of Catecholamines. The HPA system also releases certain neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) particularly known as dopamine, nor epinephrine, and epinephrine (also called adrenaline).

 

Today's world is changing at the most accelerated rates ever, and our bodies, minds, emotions and spirits are all being affected by these larger changes.  Many people are feeling a heightened sense of emotional intensity, so we are seeing more stress.

 

Not all stress is bad. It is important that we understand this. Stress, in the right amounts can keep us healthy, safe and more mentally aware. In my next entry I will talk more about this, so until then, God bless.