When being chased by a lion in the savannah, our bodies stress response naturally kicks into gear. Releasing adrenaline, activating the parasympathetic nervous system, stopping digestion and concentrating all the blood flow to the muscles so that we can run for our lives. This acute level of stress is very useful for survival and when we eventually find a safe shelter, our bodies return to allostasis. If we were however, constantly being chased by lions every time we hunt for food, activating our stress response would become chronic, lowering our immune system thus increasing our chances of developing some nasty stress related diseases.
In the modern age, we chronically activate our stress response 150 times day when we look at our phones and this response is no different than being chased by a lion.
When we sit around and worry about stressful things, we turn on the same physiological responses—but they are potentially a disaster when provoked chronically. A large body of evidence suggests that stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions. Sapolsky, R. (2004). Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. [online] Holt Paperbacks, p6. Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/327.Why_Zebras_Don_t_Get_Ulcers [Accessed 18 Jul. 2022].
Sapolsky, R. (2004). Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. [online] Holt Paperbacks, p6. Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/327.Why_Zebras_Don_t_Get_Ulcers [Accessed 18 Jul. 2022].
Superstimuli derived from the media including triggering negative headlines, provocative tweets, beauty filters, deceptive algorithms designed to compare yourself to unrealistic ideals all throw us out of allostasis, preventing us from realizing our legend. To activate our stress response, there needs to be two components at play. One is to remove certainty that an outcome will occur and the other is to remove the ability to feel in control if the outcome did occur. Addiction to the red dot, keeping up with the Joneses and obsessing over social approval through likes and volatile follower counts all play on our biases, depletes our dopamine reserves and elevates our stress levels bringing us closer to illness. Polarizing headlines about stories of us and them, outrage and injustice causes damage through learned helplessness. We have an instinctive desire to help others during suffering but we can’t help them through a screen. Illusive algorithms designed show you the most popular and trending content plays on our survivorship bias making us feel isolated, lonely and as if we’re not successful or doing enough.
In the experiment involving inescapable noise, Hiroto had given the students a personality inventory beforehand. Based on that, he was able to identify the students who came into the experiment with a strongly “internalized locus of control”—a belief that they were the masters of their own destiny and had a great deal of control in their lives—and, in contrast, the markedly “externalized” volunteers, who tended to attribute outcomes to chance and luck. In the aftermath of the uncontrollable stressor, the externalized students were far more vulnerable to learned helplessness. Transferring that to the real world, with the same external stressors, the more that someone has an internal locus of control, the less the likelihood of a depression. Collectively, these studies strike me as extremely important in forming links among stress, personality, and depression. Our lives are replete with incidents in which we become irrationally helpless.
Sapolsky, R. (2004). Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. [online] Holt Paperbacks, p303. Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/327.Why_Zebras_Don_t_Get_Ulcers [Accessed 18 Jul. 2022].
Modern day stress hits those who are poor even harder. Those who are at the bottom of the SES (socioeconomic status) are riddled with more stress related diseases. One of the reasons is being constantly reminded of having a low social status and feeling poor through the bombardment of luxury ads, beautiful people glorifying regurgitated brands telling us that our life will not be complete without the thing they’re selling.
Once those basic needs are met, it is an inevitable fact that if everyone is poor, and I mean everyone, then no one is. In order to understand why stress and psychological factors have so much to do with the SES/ health gradient, we have to begin with the obvious fact that it is never the case that everyone is poor thereby making no one poor. This brings us to a critical point in this field—the SES/ health gradient is not really about a distribution that bottoms out at being poor. It’s not about being poor. It’s about feeling poor, which is to say, it’s about feeling poorer than others around you.
Sapolsky, R. (2004). Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. [online] Holt Paperbacks, p373. Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/327.Why_Zebras_Don_t_Get_Ulcers [Accessed 18 Jul. 2022].
To become the best versions of ourselves, we need to be on the opposite side of chronic stress. We need to achieve a state of balance so that ideas can flow, fear can fade and distractions can disappear. It is scientifically proven that our best ideas spontaneously reveal themselves to us when we are not thinking about worrying, take a break from a hard problem, going for a casual stroll or taking a warm shower. In these experiences we are in a state of tranquility bringing us closer to realizing our legend.
Reality is the richest source of the unexpected. Fantasies that we conjure in our minds are predictable. We go over the same material again and again. Once in a while we’ll be struck by an original idea, but it’s rare, and it usually happens when we’re paying attention to something else—not when we’re trying to strong-arm our creativity into action. Paying attention to reality, to what you are actually doing in the moment, maximizes the flow of information into your brain. It maximizes dopamine’s ability to make new plans, because to build models that will accurately predict the future, dopamine needs data, and data flows from the senses. That’s dopamine and H& N working together.
Reality is the richest source of the unexpected. Fantasies that we conjure in our minds are predictable. We go over the same material again and again. Once in a while we’ll be struck by an original idea, but it’s rare, and it usually happens when we’re paying attention to something else—not when we’re trying to strong-arm our creativity into action. Paying attention to reality, to what you are actually doing in the moment, maximizes the flow of information into your brain. It maximizes dopamine’s ability to make new plans, because to build models that will accurately predict the future, dopamine needs data, and data flows from the senses. That’s dopamine and H& N working together.
Lieberman, D. (2018). The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race. [online] BenBella Books, p216. Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38728977-the-molecule-of-more [Accessed 10 Jul. 22].