Fight or Flight and Fizzle

How often do you feel the fight or flight reaction?  

Fight or flight describes the the response of an animal that perceives danger.  An animal has one of two choices to make to preserve its life.  It can fight or it can flee.  

Human living today doesn't have the same dangers as animals in the wild, although there are times when we are truly in peril such as a car accident, a weather disaster, medical emergency, etc.  

The body has its own defenses in place to give your  body more oxygen, more strength, and speed when the flight or fight response kicks in.  

The stressors of modern day life still incite the fight or flight response, but it does so too often and the reaction lasts too long.  This response should only be a few minutes and then the body soon relaxes.  

Too much flight or flight will impair the immune system and burn out the endocrine system, not to mention rewire the nervous system to overreact in a very hyperresponsive manner.  Sounds so fatiguing.  

So, a mechanism that is designed for survival becomes so overused, it eventully fizzles and  no longer provides protection.  

Remember the boy who cried wolf so often that no one came to his aid when he was in trouble.  They were so fed up with his false alarms that they ignored him.

We don't want our body's survival system ignoring us and ignoring our needs.  That's why we need to  take control of out plate and get rid of the unproductive.  

One tip I can share here is to look back at the second paragraph about an animal perceiving a danger.  We are not animals.  We have much more to keep track of in our lives besides food, safety, and reproduction.  So, the kicker here is how we perceive things that tend to upset us into a faulty flight or fight reaction.  

We can perceive things differently, that's a given.  

Also, in an extended fight or flight reaction, we tend to do things that hinder our health even more such as overeating, drinking, and getting poor sleep.  And, the cycle continues as the body gets more fatigued.  

Richard O'Connor, PhD, has written a number of very good books on the topic of perpetual stress. 

James L. Wilson, DC, also writes about adrenal fatigue.  

Check out these useful references.