What Is The Sympathetic Nervous System (Fight or Flight)?

so I've done some videos on stress and

you can look for those here as well but

today we're going to talk a little bit

more specifically we're going to

elaborate on the sympathetic portion of

that autonomic nervous system just to

see a little bit more detail on what

it's affecting the autonomic nervous

system is what this part of the nervous

system that handles everything that you

don't have to think about so beating

your heart and digesting food and

growing nails and so forth pumping blood

regulating blood pressure all of that is

done for you by your autonomic nervous

system and there's two branches one is

called the parasympathetic that slows

things down and the other is called a

sympathetic which is sort of like an

accelerator and that's where we're going

to talk about today it is very much like

an accelerator in the car because these

two systems they work opposite each

other so the sympathetic is like the

accelerator and the parasympathetic is

like the brake you can only do one at a

time and you can't speed up and slow

down at the same time depending on what

you do with your pedals your your car is

going to do one or the other and the

body works exactly the same way so it's

like a seesaw and the more that you fire

off your sympathetic or your fight

flight the more you're gonna turn the

parasympathetic off so it's not like a

switch but it's a gradual thing it's

like a percentage thing for every

percent that you increase your

sympathetics you decrease the

parasympathetics by one percent and

that's because it's a resource

allocation system we only have so much

blood there's only so much resources in

the body and this system determines

where is it most important to send it

right now in this moment depending on

what's going on around us so

fight/flight is exactly what it sounds

like it's about defending it's about

danger stress defending yourself it's

situations where you have to fight or

run so what it means it has

to rev things up it has to speed things

up to make available resources to make

that happen the first thing that happens

is that you detect a danger or you

something makes you feel stressed and

then your body releases adrenaline

that's the primary stress hormone the

fastest stress hormone so now your heart

rate increases so you can pump more

blood because the blood is going to

provide energy so you can fight or run

you breathe faster you start

hyperventilating extent essentially and

that's to bring in more oxygen so that

the blood can carry more oxygen and more

fuel out to the body parts to do the

work your blood pressure increases your

blood vessels constrict called

vasoconstriction because in a tighter

blood vessel the blood moves faster so

the burp the blood can get out faster to

the peripheral body parts to the muscles

that are going to do the work you

increase muscle tension because you

preload the muscles like instantly

there's something to defend against then

instantly you have that muscle tension

so you're ready to act and do the work

and it works differently above the waist

or below the waist so above the waist

you preload the muscles on the front of

the body on below the waist you preload

the muscles on the back of the body and

that makes a lot of sense because this

is for protection this is about fighting

and on the back it's about pushing off

and running so what you can notice from

this also then is when people are

stressed they tend to pull their

shoulders up they that's to protect the

the neck and the head they tend to bite

down their teeth they tend to clamp

their jaw down so to protect the the jaw

from dislocating they tend to roll their

shoulders in they tend to turn their

palms backwards so a stress posture

looks very much like this

and I'm exaggerating of course and of

course a lot of pain and tension comes

comes from that you're going to increase

some parts of your immune system and

decrease others so you're going to

increase the part of the immune system

that helps you the blood based immune

system to help clotting because in a

fight you're more likely to get a wound

if the tiger comes after you and and

gets a claw on you or if you have to run

through some thorny bushes then you

might start bleeding and you don't want

to bleed to death until before you've

had a chance to to run to safety so your

body tries to prevent that and increase

the blood clotting part of that blood

clotting is cholesterol so your body's

gonna up regulate LDL cholesterol the

bad cholesterol but it's not bad because

it's there it's being produced and

distributed just in case there's a wound

so you can help close that your cell

mediated immune system is going to

decrease

because your body says you know that

that food you ate five minutes ago I'm

not so concerned about defending against

bacteria or digesting food right now I'm

concerned about that threat out there so

the short term immune system the blood

clotting a cholesterol is going to

increase but the cell mediated your

white blood cells that fight off

infections and antibodies etc they're

gonna that's going to decrease your

cortisol is going to increase and today

everyone sort of thinks as cortisol as a

bad thing but again there's a balance to

everything and cortisol the purpose of

cortisol is to raise blood sugar so

whenever your body senses that it has to

rev things up through flight flight it

anticipates needing more energy so it

starts making cortisol right away so

that it has that energy available

through blood sugar and then your body

reprioritize --is your brain resources

so the frontal lobe is where you

normally think and evaluate abstract

creativity planning etc but during fight

flight there is very little need for

that so the body says I'm gonna take the

blood from the frontal lobe I'm gonna

send it down to the brainstem where you

have your reflexes where you have your

your primitive your automated behavior

in taking the blood away from the

frontal lobe you lose focus at etc so

now let's look at so all of these things

the body does on purpose in a fight

flight response so let's look at what

the physiological effect what are the

symptomatic effects of this if it goes

on long terms so all of these responses

are for short term and they can save a

life but long term this increased heart

rate leads to arrhythmias and heart

palpitations the blood pressure course

is hypertension which can be very

destructive if it's gets very high

muscle tension results in spasms so now

we can have neck pain and shoulder pain

as a result from this constant tension

on the lower body we can have hip

problems knee problems sciatica the

blood clotting Reed leads to increased

risk of stroke the increased cholesterol

is associated with cardiovascular

disease the reduced right blood cells

leaves us more vulnerable to infections

the increased cortisol is going to dis

is going to create stress it makes

tissues more fragile and it causes

abdominal fat deposits decreased blood

flow to the frontal lobe results in

decreased focus and concentration

increased anxiety increased chronic pain

ad D etc etc so I know what you're

saying now you're thinking well he said

that the body is smart he said the body

does this all on purpose then why would

the body create all these problems if

it's on purpose why doesn't it just do

something different because the system

has kept us alive in emergencies it's

designed for short-term

bursts of activity it saves our lives in

those situations but it was never

designed for the way we're using it

today it's not just triggered the

sympathetic nervous system isn't just

triggered by bears and lethal emergency

threats

it is also triggered by anything that

gets you tense or frustrated or upset or

angry or irritated or overwhelmed and it

can also be triggered from postural

things from sedentary lifestyles and

from from chemical insult as well so

because we have more of all of those

than we've ever had before we're getting

just a little bit of stress we're

getting a little bit of activation all

the time so we end up with a sympathetic

dominance in a system that was designed

to have and Kahneman all-or-nothing

activation we kind of fired off a little

bit all the time and it's not designed

for that so that's why the chronic

activation of that system leads to all

of these different diseases and disease

conditions so look at some of the other

videos to learn about how to reduce the

stress and how to combat this and how to

balance your body through holistic

health pretty much every video on this

channel relates to these topics and in

some way so the more that you watch the

more you'll start getting the whole

picture please share these videos so

that people understand how devastating

stress can be and how it's all part I

mean normal physiology that it's not the

body that's wrong it's we have to change

something about our lifestyle to give

the body a chance to rebalance if you're

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thanks for watching

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