What is Stress?

Video Transcript

"Welcome back, we?re going to learn what stress actually is. We?ve all heard of a fight or flight mechanism, it?s a survival operation of the human body and applies to all living things, even trees and flowers. The fight or flight mechanism is designed to help us survive danger, of any kind. The body reacts automatically when it perceives, when it, our mind and our body perceive, that we?re in danger and takes certain steps to make sure that we?re safe. For example: Imagine you?re a cave person and there?s a tiger outside, and the tiger is looking eagerly into your cave. Well what would you do to escape the tiger? You would have to fight and defend yourself or run as fast as you can to escape and have a possibility of fighting another day. So in order not survive this kind of a danger, our bodies gear up. Our breathing and heart rate increase to supply blood for muscles , our muscles get tense, so that we can fight the best we can, our pupils dilate so we can see better. Our senses, the ones that will help us fight this tiger, increase and function very effectively to help us survive this movement. Some internal processes shut down temporarily so we can use all our energy for that, for example our immune- and digestive-system. They don?t have to operate while we?re fending of this kind of danger. So we are now geared up, we are sweating, we are tight muscles, we can see excellently and we are set to fight or flee this danger. In our next clip, we?re going to talk about why sometimes that?s a problem."