Stuff You Should Know - Can People Really Get Hysterical Strength?

Episode Date: May 29, 2008

During times of emergency, people have been known to preform feats of great strength. Learn more about going from the dull stare of the dairy cow to the eye of the tiger in seconds flat. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like, he was a god. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com. With me today is fellow staff writer and extraordinary guy, Charles Bryant. How are you, Chuck? I'm great. I'm extraordinary. Thanks for having me. Chuck, I am so jazzed. I've got, like, all this adrenaline pumping through me right now. I feel

like I can lift a car. I could throw this table across the room. And you might. Yeah. Have you heard of these stories about people, like, picking cars up of other people? Yeah, I have. It's, you know, you might think it's an urban legend, you know, you hear these stories about people just chunking a Buick off of their son when they're trapped underneath it, but it's actually true. There's plenty of documented cases. When you were researching this, you found a bunch of good ones. My favorite was the Granny in Texas. This is my favorite, too, actually.

Yeah. Marie Payton, who her nickname is Bootsy. We call her Bootsy around the office. Right. I think everyone calls her Bootsy. Lovingly. Yeah, we love Bootsy. Yeah. So Bootsy was cutting her grass in Texas one day on a riding mower. I don't know if she fell off or what, but somehow the lawn mower got away from her and it kind of

kept on going. And her little granddaughter, Evie, thought it might be a good idea to stop the riding mower with, I guess, superpowers. She jumped in front of it all a super girl. It was the impression I have. And I imagine poor Evie suffered quite a start when she found that her superpowers had failed her, and she was suddenly pinned beneath a running rider mower. Right. She suffered more than that, Josh. She lost four of her little toes as a result, and she probably would have lost a lot more if it hadn't been for a super granny coming in there. Yeah. Yeah, Marie.

Yeah. So Bootsy flies in there, well, not literally, but she runs in there and she picks up this lawn mower and throws it off of her granddaughter, you know, saving her life. Threw it off of her like it was a piece of cardboard, actually. Like a piece of cardboard or maybe something even lighter. And actually after the, I imagine after the trumblings decided and Evie's injuries have been attended to, Marie went back over, kind of curious, and tried to pick up the lawn mower again. Couldn't budge it. Right. She couldn't even bend over. No, I'm sure. And what we're talking about here and what Bootsy experienced is something called

hysterical strength. Right. And it's not actually recognized by the medical community. Did you know that? Yeah, I did, because, you know, there's no way you can really follow up and do a study on something like this. Right. And for something to be experimented on, it has to be, you know, it has to be able to be replicated. And you can't just throw a kid beneath a car in a lab and see what the parents do. No, we could. You could. It's unethical. It is. And you'd lose your funding very quickly. You would. Yeah. But so, you know, medical science hasn't taken many steps to explain it,

but these cases are widely documented. There's lots of witnesses, that kind of thing. And it seems to be an extension of the fight or flight response. You know much about this? Yeah, I do. Okay. Well, then I'll tell everybody else then. You just sit there quietly. So basically, let's say you're walking down the street and you're eating a hot dog and you come upon a lion and he's loose and he's hungry. That happens all the time. All right. Well, this hot dog is being digested until your fight or flight response kicks in, which is from the sympathetic system. It takes over. All of a sudden, adrenaline's released. That hot dog is no longer being digested. Instead, all the energy on stuff that's peripheral all of a sudden

to this danger is transferred over to things like increasing your heart rate, your respiration, your pupils dilate. So you can take in more visual information, that kind of thing. And basically, you go from the dull stare of the dairy cow to the eye of the tiger in seconds flat. You're ready to go. Right. The way this connects to hysterical strength, like lifting a car, is in this fight or flight response, your muscles contract. They shorten and tighten so that you can run faster, throw a harder punch, that kind of thing. And your skeletal muscles actually contract by receiving electrical impulses from your brain. Yeah, exactly. Have you ever been electrocuted? Twice. Well, if you get a sudden surge of electricity, a lot of times you'll be

shot across the room or across the street or who knows where you could land. And a lot of people think this is probably just like a blast from the electrical box. But that's not the case. It's actually your own muscles doing all the work. You just get such a surge of electrical impulse that you tap into this energy and your muscles you didn't know you had. Yeah, you're actually throwing yourself, which illustrates this kind of untapped reserve of muscular strength. Well, yeah, and it makes you wonder why you don't walk around like that all the time and just be a race of superheroes. Right, or people ready to beat up a lion at any given moment, right? Well, I'll tell you why, Chuck. The short answer is that it would kill us in fairly short order. The whole

goal to our body is homeostasis, which is this balance between the eye of the tiger and the dull stare of the dairy cow, that kind of thing. And if we don't achieve homeostasis, if we're in the state of hyperarousal, we get worn down, our hearts wear down, we're more susceptible to illness, that kind of thing. Well, and you can feel that. You can, and you can see it actually, too. You and I both know from being overworked, you get worn down and you'll eventually die because you're in a state of stress. Well, exactly, Josh, like, you know, like a stress induced or a work-related heart attack. Exactly. And you can avoid a stress-related heart attack or work-related heart attack by taking some time out of your day and reading, How can adrenaline help you lift a 3,500

pound car on HowStuffWorks.com? For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. Cops, are they just, like, looting? Are they just, like, pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like, what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On the new podcast, The Turning, Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Ballinger. He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like, he was a god. Listen to The Turning, Room of Mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.