What is the stress response?
Answer – The body s stress response, or “flight-or-fight” response is the body s physical response to a real or imagined threat. The human nervous system activates the “flight-or-fight” mechanism. The activity of the sympathetic part of your nervous system increases causing an increase in your heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, oxygen consumption, glucose metabolism and perspiration so you can increase your physical strength to battle this “real or imagined” invader. As you can imagine, if you are under a “real or imagined” stress repeatedly, the effects can be very harmful. It is not uncommon for us to maintain high stress levels most of the time and this is causing an increase in hypertension and heart disease in our modern society.
