Scary movies & haunted houses – fun, but why?
Fight, flight, dopamine & more
During the upcoming season of skeletons and scares, we often seek out activities that give us that little pop of adrenaline. We may be uncomfortable, but we always know we’re safe. No worries right?
This type of entertainment is actually highly addictive and dangerous. Focusing on a stress-based high can do serious damage in the long term; to your physical body, mental functions, and energy centers.
Our conscious brains understand that the fight or flight response is an autonomic (automatic in the body) stress response to perceived danger. Our subconscious minds, however, define it as “I’m going to die right now, I need to utilize every resource to survive”. When the body sees that it’s in no real danger, it then releases a flood of dopamine to calm the stress response and returns to a long-term balanced wellness state. As we know, anything that releases a flood of dopamine (from hard drug use, to seeing your favorite band live) can be addictive.
So what does all that matter to me?
Some facts about stress that hit closer to home.
Here are some facts about stress that might make the paragraph above hit home a bit harder:
1: The body cannot heal itself when in a fight or flight state. Stress will always be the body’s #1 priority. Issues like viral infections or digestive distress are not key to survival. Therefore, the body will re-allocate its energy and resources for the good of making it another day. Tell your body to do this for a season, and all those back-burner issues come to the surface once the fight or flight state has relaxed. We know this phenomenon as the common winter illnesses that seem to last for weeks at a time. Tell your body to do this for YEARS, and you start seeing cancer, dementia, and other states of “dis-ease” in younger and younger populations.
2: Most people are already in a stateof stress from the high toxicity and radiation levels of our modern world.For a surprising number of us, feeling anxious, scared, endangered, and so on gives a sense of normalcy – adding to the addictive nature. People stimulate fear and stress to feel “normal” – how a heavy drug user needs a constant stream of their chosen substance to feel “normal”. We have daily deadlines to meet at work, we consume chemicals constantly in our food and drink, we have family and friend obligations we can’t miss again! We have to start prioritizing self-care so that the body can understand what it’s healthy normal truly is.
3: When the body is stressed, it cannot tell the difference between real life-threatening danger, and being late for the bus.To our subconscious minds, all stress and fear are exactly the same. Even if we’re just stuck in an awkward elevator conversation, our bodies will think we’re being chased by a tiger. Acute fear responses (like a jump-scare) will actually upregulate immunity functions for a short time, but will slow down, or even shut down, certain organ system functions. Moderate-length stressors (like scary movies or haunted houses) will down-regulate cell-mediated immunity; meaning less antigen-response. Long-term fight or flight (like an entire season of scary activities) drastically limits all forms of immunity in the body.
4: Don’t underestimate the full-being effects of fear and stress on your body, mind, and soul.Other than immune system suppression, fear can lead to cardiovascular conditions, decreased fertility, delay in brain reactivity and emotional regulation, depression, and premature death.
This season communicate with your body & try not to stress! We wish you a fantastic (not too spooky) Halloween!
By Kalen P C Nielsen
Vedara Holistic Practitioner
References:
https://www.ajmc.com/view/in-oncology-clinical-pathways-the-variability-isn-t-with-the-drugs
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361287/
https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/impact-fear-and-anxiety
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/fondness-fear-why-do-we-be-scared-ncna812661
