What is Chronic Stress, how does it affect our health?
We have basic instincts to survive, sustain and procreate. On the basis of these instincts we have survived and evolved for thousands of years. The survival instinct has helped us over the ages to save ourselves from dangers, it still helps us on occasions, where our survival depends upon fast response. This ‘survival’ instinct causes the response, commonly known as ‘Fight or Flight’. Since we don’t face the same dangerous living situations as our ancestors did, now this ‘Fight or Flight’ response gets triggered if someone is facing critical project deadline, financial threat or getting into an argument. Often in these situations neither fight or flight is a solution and this response doesn’t end but remains chronically active and causes harms to biological systems in long run. The triggering of this response is mainly caused by misidentification of the threat. It is analogous to the allergic response, in which the immune system misidentifies the simple proteins and substances as poten
