I was going to do a bunch of research on stress and how it affects your health, but then I got too stressed out. Stress isn’t only ugly to be around, but its impact on your body is so profound it is immeasurable. When our minds are stressed it taxes our adrenal glands, strains our organs, and poisons our blood. Stress ages you. It disturbs your endocrine system, its ability to function, and the production of chemicals in brain that make you feel good. The cells then become so deeply compromised by the flow of stress hormones that they begin to form an addiction to the feeling and provoke the brain to produce more. Just thinking about what stress is doing to me is making me have a panic attack.
So much of what we get stressed about is not worth the damage it does. But stress is hard to deal with because it is so internally processed. Sure there are pills to take that may help with the overwhelming crippling sensation of it all, but that doesn’t necessarily cure the problem just because you are less aware of it.
But when you think about the stress from an evolutionary perspective, we would experience it when were being chased by wolves, or when about to be trampled by wooly mammoths. There was a very real function for stress because it helped keep us alive. The fight or flight impulse is still in us today despite the fact that it is not needed in the same capacity. It is in the realm of the absurd how in our 1st world bubble we use this precious resource by getting stressed about traffic, being late for dinner, or how many calories you just ate.
But to feel stress is in our DNA. I can see it in The Munch already. She has nothing to actually be stressed about, but sometimes she will work herself into a frenzy because she can’t move her baby’s stroller fast enough. So I figure the best thing I can do for her is to capture a bear and release it every once in a while…. just to keep her brain chemistry balanced.
“Goddamn %#*^$# stroller is stuck!”
