What fuels us?October 2014
Lesson 3: How does adrenalin have an effect on the body and brain?
When Fear Makes Us Superhuman
Can an extreme response to fear give us strength we would not have under normal circumstances?
By Jeff Wise
Tom Boyle Jr., was sitting in the passenger's seat of his pickup truck, his wife Elizabeth at the wheel. The Camaro ahead of them hit the gas. "Oh my God," Elizabeth said. "Do you see that?"
The Camaro had hit a cyclist, and the rider was pinned underneath the car. Boyle threw open the door of the truck and started running after the car.
One of cyclist’s legs was pinned betweenthe car and the frame of his bike, the other jammed between the bike and the asphalt.
Without stopping to think, Boyle reached under the frame of the car and lifted. With a sound of groaning metal, the car eased upward a few inches. "Mister, mister, higher, higher," the cyclist screamed.
The front end lifted a few more inches. "'OK, it's off me," the boy called out, his voice tight withpain. " At last, about 45 seconds after he'd first heaved the car upward, Boyle set it back down.
Yet to this day there's something about that evening that Boyle can't figure out. It's no mystery to him why he did what he did—but he can't quite figure out how.
"There's no way I could lift that car right now," he says.
The heaviest barbell that Boyle ever dead-lifted weighed 700 pounds. The world record is 1,008 pounds. A stock Camaro weighs 3,000 pounds. Even factoring leverage, something extraordinary was going on that night.
That something was the body's fear response. When we find ourselves under intense pressure, fear unleashes reserves of energy that normally remain inaccessible. We become, in effect, superhuman.
Fine motor skills (used to thread a needle or put a key in a lock) tend to decline when we're under pressure. But gross motor skills (used to run or jump) peak: The closer a bear is nipping at your heels, the faster you'll run.
Under acutestress, the body's sympathetic nervous system and endocrine system prepare the body for sustained, vigorous action. The adrenal gland dumps adrenaline into the blood stream causing a surge blood pressure and increased heart rate in order to deliver oxygen and energy to the muscles. It's the biological equivalent of opening the throttle of an engine.
Millions of years ago, our ancestors lived in a world in which danger was ever-present. Wild animals, natural disasters, rival clans—death could come at any time. Humans needed a danger-response system that was fast and vigorous.
Today, that same system remains with us, silently monitoring our environments.
*From: Wise, J. (2009) When Fear Makes Us Superhuman. Scientific American. Retrieved from:
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