The Ultimate Performance Center

Brain Sensation: Part 1

You’re relaxing in your backyard on a warm, sunny summer day. Without warning some punk detonates a firecracker. You explosively levitate off your lounger and think, “Where’s the punk who blew off that darn bomb?”

From the moment you heard the sound of that explosion, instantaneously, your brain sent out a threat alert to various organs in your body. In particular, the adrenal glands are commanded to secrete a powerful hormone called adrenaline, our fight or flight hormone.

Adrenaline is an essential component of man’s genetic code bestowed upon us by Mother Nature. And although it’s quite an antiquated hormone (another caveman gene) it does offers plenty of modern-day uses like enabling us to fight off an impending pick-pocketer or to flee (flight) the neighbors’ angry pit bull.

In the wake of this brain-adrenal reaction adrenaline serves as an only-when-absolutely-necessary super-powered fuel source that alarms the auditory, visual, muscular, circulatory, respiratory and nervous systems (to name a few) to escape and/or endure life-threatening events. As a result of adrenaline, our hearts beat much more rapidly to increase the circulation of energy-rich blood throughout the body. Our breathing (respiration) accelerates to provide our muscles with more oxygen. Our hearing and eyesight acutely hone in on, “Where’s that punk?”

We need adrenaline, and the brain is the only sensory organ that has the authority to command the adrenals to manufacture and secrete this audacious hormone. And since rises in adrenaline often result in concurrent rises in testosterone, playing sports, participating in extreme activities, or just working out, all qualify, to some degree, as adrenaline instigators.

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Written by John Abdo, ©, All Rights Reserved

Excerpts taken from Brain Sensation & Motivation

December 10, 2015 Posted by John Abdo | Performance Library | adrenal, aggression, anger, anxiety, blood, brain, Fight, fighting, Mind, Mother Nature, pit bull, sports, workout | Leave a comment