How stress affects your Nervous System
The effects of Stress can be both good and bad for your body.
There are these things in our nervous system called Neurotransmitters.
Neurotransmitter: A chemical that is released from a nerve cell which thereby transmits an impulse from a nerve cell to another nerve, muscle, organ, or other tissue. A neurotransmitter is a messenger of neurological information from one cell to another.
As stated above, they send chemicals around the body to different cells. Stress causes lots of neurotransmitters to be released, such as:
- Dopamine
- Dopamine is one of the brain’s neurotransmitters—a chemical that ferries information between neurons. Dopamine helps regulate movement, attention, learning, and emotional responses. It also enables us not only to see rewards but to take action to move toward them.
- Epinephrine (or Adrenaline)
- Epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, is a hormone produced by the adrenal glands, which are located on top of each of your kidneys. The hormone is necessary for maintaining a healthy cardiovascular system — it makes the heart beat more strongly and diverts blood to tissues during times of stress.
- Emotions such as fear, stress, or anger can trigger the release of epinephrine. When the hormone enters the bloodstream, the following will increase:
- Heart rate
- Cardiac output
- Blood pressure
- Sugar metabolism
- The above responses help to prepare your body for a "fight or flight" reaction, making you ready for rapid, strenuous activity
- Norepinephrine (noradrenaline)
- Norepinephrine, also called noradrenaline, a substance that is released predominantly from the ends of sympathetic nerve fibers and that acts to increase the force of skeletal muscle contraction and the rate and force of contraction of the heart. The actions of norepinephrine are vital to the fight-or-flight response, whereby the body prepares to react to or retreat from an acute threat.
Understanding The Stress Response
The brain is a complex organ, needing to take care of all of the daily actions, this already takes a toll on the brain. There is one thing that humans can feel that can cause great discomfort to a person. Stress is the name of the feeling and it can lead to quite a few negative effects on the body such as high blood pressure, artery-clogging, and it could cause a person to experience things such as depression, anxiety, and addiction in some cases. The feeling of stress can come just about anything from forgetting to submit an assignment to almost getting into a car crash. All of these events usually come from a distress signal being sent to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the command center of the body telling it to do action based on the situation presented before you. This part of the brain is able to communicate with the body through the nervous system which controls involuntary actions such as breathing. There are two components to the nervous system, the Sympathetic and the parasympathetic. The Sympathetic part of the nervous system gives the body the extra burst of energy to either a person get away from danger or it could be used to fight. The parasympathetic part of the nervous system is used as a way to clam the body after the event has happened. The glands for these intense moments are known as the adrenal glands which are used as a way to help get you out of dangerous situations. The effects of these glands can cause changes in the body to occur such as wider airways for a larger amount of oxygen to come into the body, heart rates will also increase alongside heightened sense. This is why when a person gains a glimpse of oncoming cars, they are able to back away out of danger before being able to fully understand what is about to happen.