Change Your Brain Every Day - The Fight or Flight Response: Our Body’s Response to Stress

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

In the second episode based on material from Daniel G. Amen MD's new book, Feel Better Fast and Make It Last, Dr. Amen and Tana Amen discuss how our evolutionary fight or flight response can affect our stress levels. They describe how our habits in dealing with this response can lead to unhealthy chronic stress, as well as what you can do to get those feelings under control when they strike unexpectedly.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome back. We're in our Feel Better Fast and Make It Last series, and you can pre-order the book at feelbetterfast.com. We're so excited to be able to bring you this information. And if you pre-order it, we actually have four gifts for you along with it, including the introduction and first chapter of Feel Better Fast.

You can get that even before you get the book. A Feel Better Fast quick start guide. So many people, they want the cliff notes, right? They get a book and it's like, oh, I don't have time to read the whole book. Although you really like it's filled with lots of stories and practical information on how to feel better fast. Um, and also get an audio series. Uh, we're going to talk right now about hypnosis and how powerful that is to help you feel better fast. And Tana's new cookbook, the 10 Day Brain Boost cookbook. You want to feel better fast? How about 10 days? We'll give you strategies for each day, including what foods to eat, which can seriously help you feel better fast.

And we're not just making this up. This is coming from people we've worked with, like thousands of people, really, that over the years, we get all these testimonials and people are like, wow, I can't believe within, you know, seven to 10 days, my mood started to lift. I started to have more energy. I, you know, my pain is decreased. You know, my joints feel better just on and on how, when they start to do the right things, they begin to feel better really quickly. So it doesn't mean you aren't going to continue to

progress to get better. It's not like all better. It means you start to radically shift so that you then have the energy to do the right things. So if you go to feelbetterfast.com, you can pre-order the book. And what I want to talk about now, and I talk about this in the beginning of chapter one, is the fight or flight response. And when people get adrenaline, when they get anxious or they get afraid, you actually have a system in your body to help you manage that. And it's the dynamic tension between the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. So interesting. And so I tell a story to open the book about a woman who's in the emergency room screaming because she has a swollen leg from a DVT

or a deep venous thrombosis. So she has a blood clot. Clamps down, right. And it's made her legs swell. And she's screaming and the chief resident is trying to start an IV in her foot so that they can image where the blood clot is. And it's not going well. That is, you know, as she pokes her back, the patient screams. And then the doctor screams at the patient, I hear this.

And when that's happening, her vessels are clamping down. Right, because when you get anxious, part of the fight or flight response is your peripheral blood vessels constrict. Right. So that's why your hands and feet get cold. It goes to your core. And it goes to the big muscles in your legs and arms so that you're either going to flight, run away,

or you're going to fight. And Beth is having none of this poking her. And so when I saw this, I asked the chief resident if I could try to start the IV. But the first thing I did was not poke her. It was I put her in a trance, hypnotic trance, just to begin to calm her down. And it was so powerful. It's really interesting. The flight or fight is so fascinating. Um, it's how even in martial arts, we know we can, um, you know how to look for a fight. Like you actually can watch people to spot when someone's going to be violent because

they get monosyllabic. They lose the ability for articulate speech. They lose fine motor skills so everything becomes big movements. So it's really an interesting thing. People start to behave really wacky when this starts to happen. Well, and what happens is their amygdala takes over so that's the almond-shaped structure deep in your limbic brain, your emotional brain, and it becomes overactive and your frontal lobes

actually drop in activity so you're not as thoughtful. You go on automatic fight or flight. And so the amygdala takes over. Your hypothalamus excretes ACTH, adrenal corticotropin hormone, goes to your kidneys. They produce cortisol and adrenaline. And this is what it sets off. Your pupils dilate because you have better tunnel vision. So you begin to lose peripheral vision. Your hearing actually becomes less acute.

Your tears and saliva dry up. Your skin, the veins constrict, cold hands, cold feet, so more blood flow to your shoulders and to your hips. You can fight or flee. The lung passages open up. Breathing becomes rapid and shallow. Blood sugar levels increase. Heart beats faster. Muscles become tense. Your digestion slows down. Your immune system shuts down. You have trouble focusing on small things. And in the book, there's actually a great illustration.

So threat, an attack, harmful event. So something happens, your brain processes it as a threat, you produce hormones and heart goes faster, bladder reacts, pupils dilate, your breathing changes, your heart rate changes, and your whole system is going into, we call it a fight or flight response. Right. And you'd be better at explaining why people do one or the other. Some people, I mean, literally as somebody who practices martial arts, because I was, you know, attacked when I was younger, some people freeze. We've actually seen people like they just, they end up being hurt because they can't respond because of this response. Or there are people like me who I go psycho

when something happens. Like I can't even think straight because I get so angry. So people become very dangerous. So like the time we were on the beach and we were attacked. You just keep having to bring this up, don't you? Do pitbulls.

I think I scared the pitbulls, actually. The mama bear thing in me just went crazy. I'm not sure if I scared the pitbulls more or the gangbanger that owned the pitbulls. Or me. Right. It was bad. It was really bad. But anyways, the point being, it's a dangerous state to be in.

Either way, it's a dangerous state to be in. Either way, it's a dangerous state to be in. But what's worse than even that when it's an acute situation is when people begin to do this. If it happens too much, you begin to train your system to do it chronically. That's really bad. And so often, and you know, we travel from Orange County to Los Angeles a lot. And there's a lot of traffic issues. Yeah, that's me. I get so irritated. For me, if somebody acts stupid, I just go, okay. Not always. Not always.

He just doesn't hear himself. It's like subconscious. Yeah, no, when I was in Greece. We're in the car laughing because he's like actually reacting, but he doesn't even realize it. He lets it go. I like lose my mind. So it can be traffic. It can be stress with a child that's struggling. It can be if you're in a conflicted marriage

or job. So there are lots of reasons. But if you're under chronic stress, all of these things can begin to take over. So you can have a chronic stress response. There's actually a book I talk about in Feel Better Fast called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Right. because once they get chased by a lion, if they don't get caught, their fight or flight response almost immediately goes back to normal. It adapts, yeah. It adapts. But we have a chronic stress response,

and what are the things you can do to feel better first? Well, and you make people around you anxious. My mom's a perfect example of that. She is chronically stressed and she sort of creates some of that. It's just, it's become almost a habit for her, but she'll stress people around her with her constant level of, you know,

energy and anxiety. So, and so in feel better fast and make it last, we actually talk about a number of strategies that can really help to reprogram your mind to feel significantly better. So as I help Beth in the emergency room with hypnosis, so powerful. Oh, my gosh. And if you pre-order the book, we actually have a number of hypnosis audios that I do for you on pain and weight loss, anxiety, and so on. So hypnosis, I'm a huge fan of that.

Also diaphragmatic breathing, because when you get stressed, your breathing becomes shallow and fast. So learning how to slow it down and here's just a super simple tiny habit. We'll talk about what's the smallest thing I can do today that will make the biggest difference. Or in the moment. And in Feel Better Fast, there are dozens of tiny habits. It's take a big breath, about five seconds in, hold it for a second or two, and then take five or even 10 seconds to blow it out. So five seconds in, hold it just for a second, take five to 10 seconds to blow it out then hold it out for a second and then take another deep breath if you do that just five times it can significantly

decrease your stress and your anxiety so one thing just a little tip before we end this segment that's like what I think that's a great takeaway for today is when we're training that's one thing that soldiers and police officers learn to when they are in a highly stressful situation that's a great takeaway for today is when we're training, that's one thing that soldiers and police officers learn too. When they are in a highly stressful situation that's adrenaline driven, taking deep breaths like you just talked about and forcing themselves to look from side to side, it breaks that tunnel vision. So those two things in those adrenaline driven situations literally can help you to reset. One of the most important things I do, you know, I've been thinking a lot lately, you know, so after I've been a psychiatrist for 40 years,

it's hard to say that, but what are the top 20 things that I teach my patients? And diaphragmatic breathing is in that top 20 is you can learn to control your own physiology to feel better fast. You can learn to control how your body responds, but it takes a little bit of practice, right? That I'm seeing this NBA player I like a lot, and he didn't become a masterful basketball player overnight, right? It took him time to develop these skills. And I want you to learn to discipline your mind and your body. And it's going to take a little time, but one of the best, quickest techniques to feel better fast is diaphragmatic breathing.

I talk about how important it is and go through it step by step in Feel Better Fast. We would dearly love if you would pre-order or if you listen to this after the book is out, order the book. Go to feelbetterfast.com. You'll get the extra gifts that we talk about, including Tana's new book, The 10-Day Brain Boost. You can feel better fast. Stay with us.

Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month.