Saturday, March 24, 2007

Are you Scared - The Fight-or-flight Response

Have you ever noticed the way one behaves when one is scared or stressed, we really behave in a different way. So it got me thinking as to why do people react in certain ways when they are scared or afraid.
What are the common reactions when one is scared or afraid,
  • Faster Heartbeat
  • Heavy Breathing
  • Sweaty Palms
  • Dry mouth
  • Body starts shivering
  • Anxiety
While trying to understand why we are afraid i came across this term called "fight or flight" The bodies reaction to fear is known as "fight or flight".

Assume that you are walking on the road at night, and a thug comes in front of you with a knife.
You have two options
1) Turn and walk away (flight), or
2) fight,
even though you know fighting won't solve the problem.

During the process of preparing for either fight or flight, your body does a number of things automatically like,
  • Increasing your heart rate to pump more blood to your muscles and brain.
  • Forces you to breathe heavily so that your lungs take in air faster to supply your body with oxygen.
  • Increases the size of your pupils in your eyes to make you see better.
  • Slows down your digestive and urinary systems for the moment so you can concentrate on more important things.
So the next time you or someone else gets scared, you now know as to why one reacts like this.

4 comments:

InkTank said...

for a person who has no , or very less fear of death, all these symptoms are to a very minimal extent. wil write on this someday, whatever i experienced a few years back when i had a minor accident

Aditi said...

nice one sammy (is it ok), the fight or flight response, just opposite to what our cricketers do flight or flight response...

J.KANNAN said...

Dear Sammy,
A good one indeed presented in brief. I look for more detsils from Anand Bai on this as he has planned to write one.
In a way I hv to agree with Anand Bai as 'am in the first category referered to by him. May be you will find an articles or two (Old ones) in my blog and as and when time permits may like to read.
Keep writing for me to continue to read good articles.

JK

Praveen said...

good article,,,,there is a hormone 'adrenalin' which causes such fight or flight reactions..

all these symptoms are due to this hormone