(2)Adrenaline; Alarm Response, Fight Or Flight Response

Often times, we go into some states in which there's no cause for alarm, because the situation is under control but sometimes there should not be any cause for control because the situation is under alarm. This is the definition of alarm response as mediated by the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS)of our bodies. -Esegbue Peters.

Life is everything but static. In its dynamism lie a lot of contrasts, paradoxes and perhaps oxymoron. That's why in my hypothesis, I propounded that sometimes you live the alarm, no need for control and not every time trying to control the situation. More poignantly, to allow alarm to run its full course is the function of the SNS.

The SNS is part of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)in turn, a part of our nervous system. A part of the brain function that regulated our emergency activities. It's the SNS of the autonomic nervous system that secretes almighty

Adrenaline: a hormone, when released enables us to do the impossible.

In the last edition of this piece, I introduced the ANS and the alarm response, today we will look more incisively into the meanings of Alarm, when to react, emergency, type actions and above all begin to adapt to situations. Before we see them let me tease you a little. Have you ever seen sudden changes in your body just because you are about to be called to speak in the public, or had to jump a two-storey building because of fire outbreak or ran the race of your life because of the arrival of armed robbers or once turned blue as you are about to be burnt inside a car with doors locked stiff, before suddenly, rescue came, or the minor but damaging response which occurs when you are about to go for an exam or interview or a few seconds to road mishap before God miraculously takes you away from danger.

But in all emergencies, Adrenaline is released to prepare the body for action: Fight or fight. For strong people, most of their actions are fight while flight is the dominant action of lazy people. In all, Adrenaline causes us to do so many things, summarily, to provide energy for action via increase in respiration and increase in glucose production via breakdown of glycogen by the liver. Apart from these actions, the eyes, through the pupils dilate, so that vision is improved, you sweat more because your body would want to remove heat, your mouth may turn dry, digestion may stop or be reduced, urine production may reduce drastically and the arteries in the muscles will enlarge so that blood flow through them will increase.

You can see a cascade of actions at once; note that some body parts like the intestine, stomach and kidney can decrease in function so that energy and blood will go to organs like the heart, lungs and muscles for you to act.

One thing we will learn is that the autonomic actions are not totally autonomic; to a significant degree, they can be controlled. For instance it may cause you to jump but how you jump may be controlled, it may cause you to sweat but the quantity of sweat may be controlled. This can be achieved through increased consciousness-awareness, since the sympathetic functions are mainly unconscious actions. This is why during emergencies some people break their legs or sustained too many injuries while some others do not.

If we continue to meditate on emergencies, the effects and how to react during emergency, then we are increasing our awareness and this will help control the alarm during stress.

Conversely a time comes when you do not need to control the situation rather allow the alarm to 'blow.' What situation should this arise? There are two situations, first, during fighting and secondly, fleeing. In both circumstances you use energy and allow the alarm response to auto drive you. When you fight there is a positive fear that causes you to fight more, not to give up because when you do, you will lose out or die. Just as in exercise, when the entire sympathetic nervous system functions for increased performance fighting also causes your entire SNS to shoot up. When armed robbers appear, your ability to think fast matters, most times, you don't fight and when you want to flee don't run and sustain more injuries than they would have inflicted on you.

I suggest that 60 percent of our lifetime should be led by emergency-type action. There are so many problems a man must encounter that ordinary solutions will not be able to solve. We must be able to discharge Adrenaline in a fashion typical only of mass sympathetic discharge during fight or flight response, alarm response to solve some problems. In this case the most important organ in your body is the adrenal gland, a small gland on top of the kidneys that produces three great hormones: adrenaline, aldosterone and cortisol which is needed or else stress kills you.

But think beyond Adrenaline, think properly, why is it that during exam you read and understand, when chased by a dog you can jump a fence, if you see danger you can use Bolt or Ben Johnson, but ordinarily you wobble and fumble on daily basis?