6.1.3.9. Adaptation - Not just Biochemistry, the Totality of Body’s Responses

1. Summary: The text discusses the body's response to stress, differentiating between acute and chronic stress. It explains how the body prioritizes survival in acute stress, leading to imbalances in various systems, and how chronic stress results in a weakened immune system and other health issues. The text also mentions the research of Garkavi and the impact of stress on the nervous system and pain perception.

what you see is acute and chronic stress. This is the classical interpretation of the body's response as you know according to Selier. So here, what we're dealing with is when the disturbance, the amplitude and the size of disturbance is very big. So what you see here is that the body now is engaged is pretty much in the life preservation mode. So what you see here is certain systems are highly overactivated, but only some of them, as you see here. So the adrenal gland mass goes way over the top. The central nervous system gets activated. And on the other hand, the activity of sexual glands is very low. It's over here. The thymus mass is very low over here and so on. So overall, what we have is that the body in this acute stress response start to work in a very non-coherent way. So some systems are way up, other systems are way down. And what it means is that the body engages in this response in order to preserve life, meaning it will start to use those systems that are so-called energetically expensive. So instead of trying to maintain the overall balance and to keep up with the rebuilding of the healing process is a very short-term response. But what happens is that you cannot maintain that level of activation for too long. Very soon you will hit exhaustion stage. And here, your system start to shut down because simply cannot maintain that level of activity. And then gradually, if the disturbance is still there, you will shift into the chronic stress response. So in chronic stress response, the adrenal glands, CC, are large. CNS inhibitory central nervous system is way about excitation. And most importantly, is the level of lymphocytes. This is the point here. I'll touch on lymphocytes here in the next slide. But what happens is that in chronic stress response, the activity of the overall activity of the immune system would be very low. This is when you are most prone to infectious disease. This is when you can develop autoimmune conditions, and this is also when you can develop cancer. If people look at the sexual glands, you'll notice that they're below normal. And if you look at, let's say, today, a lot of common stuff, rectal dysfunction, low libido, all of these things that go with this -- they all go with this stressed state. And it is here on the polar graph, Garkavi did a lot of research on it to show that. And also just this nervous system inhibition, how that goes off the chart, so to speak, I really find that one fascinating. The central nervous system says, the shirt's on my back, the shirt's on my back, the shirt's on my back. And then when the inhibition goes up, you no longer register the shirt is on your back. And so in terms of pain, this would be turning down all the stuff on the body so that the thing is insulting it, the level that is experienced and it gets turned down the person can actually just survive in the environment. So it's like the survival mechanism.