How Our Body Responds To Stress

By Andreas Moritz

Stress is one of the greatest deterrents to health and well-being. Virtually all of us experience stress in our life from time to time, and our bodies are designed to respond accordingly. For example, if we encounter physical danger, the ‘fight or flight’ stress responses within our body are designed to help us protect ourselves from that danger. So long as experiences of this nature are infrequent, our body is generally able to restore its normal equilibrium without any significant long-term effect on our health.

The more damaging situations are those to which we are exposed on a recurring basis, such as a stressful job, an inharmonious relationship or constant worries about finances. Even watching the daily television news programs tend to create levels of stress within us as we react emotionally to situations that seem tragic or unjust. We must therefore address issues that tend to cause stress, and look for insights and guidance as to how we can live our life in peace and harmony even amid the seeming chaos of our contemporary world.

Growth or Protection

In his book The Biology of Belief, Dr. Bruce Lipton discusses the concept of ‘growth or protection’. Essentially this concept illustrates how the physiological processes within our body are dramatically affected by fear and stress.

The story begins at the cellular level. Dr. Lipton was a research biologist for many years, the focus of his work being on the functioning of human cells. One of the phenomena he noted early in his work was that if he placed human endothelial cells in the center of a culture dish, and then placed nutrients near the edge of the dish, the cells gradually migrated toward the nutrients. On the other hand, if he placed toxins near the edge of the dish, the cells would migrate away from the toxins. In other words, human cells would either move toward that which was nurturing, or away from that which was endangering. To say it another way, in any given moment, human cells are either in a state of ‘growth’, or in a state of ‘protection’.

Our human bodies are made up of approximately 50 trillion cells. Just like the individual cells, our bodies tend to be either in a state of growth or protection. The term ‘growth’, as used here, is intended to imply not just growing in size from infancy to adulthood, but also the continual sustenance and regeneration of our bodies throughout our lifetime.

The growth center of our body is the ‘visceral’ area, which includes the digestive system, and organs such as the lungs, heart, liver, and kidneys – all of the organs that play a key role in the sustenance and regeneration of our body. The protection aspect of our body involves two facets: internal protection and external protection. The primary system with responsibility for internal protection is the immune system. Our external protection involves the somatic system, such as our arms and legs that enable us to respond to a ‘fight or flight’ situation.

Under normal circumstances, if our life situation is reasonably peaceful and we feel a sense of security, our body will be in a state of growth most of the time. However, if we are suddenly confronted with a dangerous situation, such as an earthquake, our body immediately shifts to a state of protection. This shift is initiated by our nervous system, working through our endocrine glands.

When our body shifts from a state of growth to a state of protection, we are impacted in three primary ways:

• The flow of blood is constricted in our visceral area, and re-directed to our somatic system (arms, legs, etc.). Consequently, the functioning of our life-sustaining systems, such as our digestive system, is throttled back to a minimum.
• Since the threat in the example of an earthquake is an external threat, rather than an internal threat, the immune system is essentially put on temporary hold in order to conserve energy and make it available for somatic activity. This is analogous to the situation involving a modern commercial airplane – just prior to heading down the runway for takeoff, the pilot turns off auxiliary systems such as the air conditioning, so that all of the thrust of the engines is available to support lift-off.
• The blood flow in the brain is re-directed from the forebrain, where our rational thinking takes place, to the hindbrain, which involves our reflex responses. Since it is the frontal lobes of the forebrain that support rational thinking, when we shift into a state of protection, our ability to think logically is impaired. We frequently hear stories of experienced hikers who become lost in bad weather. If fear and panic overtake a hiker, they often do not make rational survival decisions. For example, they may continue to hike aimlessly as fast as they can to the point of exhaustion, rather than using their energy to build a shelter in which to wait out the storm.

If our body remains in a state of protection for a relatively short period of time, little damage is done to our internal growth-related processes. However, unlike each individual cell that at any point in time is either totally in a state of growth or state of protection, the collective of cells that constitute our body can exist in gradational states somewhere between total growth and total protection. This is the state in which we are likely to find ourselves if our life is regularly taxed under excessive stress.

For example, we know that under conditions of stress or turmoil, we frequently suffer from indigestion. We also know that during periods of stress, we are more likely to come down with a cold, or experience other aches and pains within our body.

We may, or may not be aware that our rational mind does not function as well under stressful situation. Since it is our rational mind that is the ‘observer’ of our thinking ability under such situations, the observer, itself, may not be able to observe clearly.

In his book, Dr. Lipton goes on to describe how this concept of ‘growth or protection’ affects the development of a fetus during pregnancy. The evolving fetus lives in the emotional field of the mother, and is dramatically impacted in its development by these emotions. If the mother’s emotions are normally peaceful and loving, then the forebrain of the fetus will develop in a normal, healthy manner. However, if the mother is frequently in a state of fear and anger, nature prepares the fetus to live in a correspondingly harsh emotional environment after birth. So it directs the hindbrain to be developed more fully, at the expense of the development of the forebrain. Dr. Lipton points out that the intelligence of a child can be affected by as much as 50%, depending on the emotional environment in which its development took place while in the womb.

Dr. Lipton’s work also provides important information for all of us as to how our body is affected by our thoughts and emotions. It carries an especially important message for young couples that are thinking about starting a family.

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