The Body-Mind Connection of Stress

What This Lesson Is About

Big Questions to Explore:

• How does your body react to stress?
• What is the "fight or flight" response?
• Why does your body do things like beat faster or make your mouth feel dry when you're stressed?

What You'll Do

In this activity, you'll first fill out a checklist about how your own body reacts to stress. Then your class will turn everyone's answers into a graph. Next, you'll work with a partner to learn about the body parts and chemicals that cause stress symptoms — things like a racing heart, cold hands, and a dry mouth. You'll also learn about longer-lasting symptoms, like headaches and trouble sleeping. Finally, you'll talk about your own reactions to stress and learn that most of these reactions are just your body working the way it's supposed to. You'll also learn some ways to handle stress.

What You'll Learn to Do

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

• Look closely at your own body's reactions to stress
• Explain the "fight or flight" response
• Understand how the body reacts to stress, including how hormones are involved
• Figure out what happens inside your own body when you're stressed
• Explain that there are many normal ways bodies respond to stress
• Build a bar graph

Background Information

The human body automatically reacts to stress by releasing hormones — chemicals made by glands that travel through the blood and affect how organs work. These hormones control heart rate and breathing. This gives the body extra energy to either fight the problem or run away from it. That's why it's called the "fight or flight" response. This isn't just a human thing — animals have it too. (In this lesson, we'll use a cat as an example to help show that this stress response happens in animals as well as people.)

Here's how it works: The hypothalamus (a part of the brain) sends a signal to the pituitary gland (also in the brain). The pituitary gland then signals the adrenal glands (located on top of your kidneys) to release three stress hormones: epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. These chemicals make your heart beat faster and your breathing speed up, giving you a burst of energy to fight or flee. They also affect other parts of your body.

Because of these hormones, people can experience many different physical reactions to stress, such as:

• Headaches
• Dry mouth
• Trouble swallowing
• A racing heart
• Feeling sick to your stomach
• Cold hands
• Trouble focusing
• Trouble sleeping
• Craving certain foods
• Sudden angry outbursts

Kids and teens often worry about stress and want to learn how to manage it better. Parents want to help too.

This lesson uses two features from the BAM! Body and Mind website: the "Got Butterflies?" game and the "Feelin' Frazzled?" list of 10 tips for relieving stress. You don't need internet access to use this lesson, though — it works either way.

What You'll Need

• Handout 1: Taking Stock: My Body's Reaction to Stress
• Handout 2: Cold Hands, Fast Heart: The Body's Reaction to Stress

Safety

Follow your normal classroom safety rules.

Steps for the Lesson

Getting Started (10 minutes)

1. Before learning about the body's chemical reactions to stress, you'll fill out a checklist about your own reactions. Your teacher will hand out Handout 1.

1. Look at the drawing of the cat and read the information at the top of the handout. Have you ever seen a cat react to something stressful — like a dog running by, another cat showing up, or a trip to the vet? Talk with your class about what cats do in these situations.

1. Notice that cats don't have to think about how to react — the "fight or flight" response just happens automatically. Talk about other animals and the special abilities they have to react to danger. For example, porcupines release their quills, and dogs growl.

1. Remember that humans have this same automatic response. The instinct to fight or run away is built into our bodies.

Exploring (15 minutes)

1. Fill out the checklist about how your body reacts to stress.

1. Once everyone finishes, your class will put all the answers together into a bar graph. You might do this together in class, or collect the information in class and make the graph as homework.

Understanding the Science (20 minutes)

1. Your teacher will hand out Handout 2. Now you'll learn why your body reacts this way.

1. Hormones cause the "fight or flight" response in both animals and people. Remember, hormones are chemicals made by glands that travel through the blood and affect how your organs work.

1. Read Handout 2 and look at the diagram of the body. Then review with your class how different glands and hormones control your stress reactions. The hypothalamus and pituitary gland (in the brain) and the adrenal glands (on top of the kidneys) work together to help your body handle stress. The hypothalamus signals the pituitary gland, which signals the adrenal glands to release epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. These hormones speed up your heart rate and breathing, giving you a burst of energy, and they affect other parts of your body too. (One more hormone called serotonin matters here too — it helps you feel good and helps control your sleep.)

1. As you go through how stress affects the body, try to explain why each symptom happens. Your teacher will help if you get stuck. The first six reactions below usually happen with short-term stress. The rest — headaches, trouble sleeping, appetite changes, and sudden anger — usually happen with long-term stress.

Why Does This Happen? A Body-by-Body Guide

• Cold hands: Stress hormones move blood away from your skin and toward your heart and muscles, giving them more strength. This can leave your hands and other body parts feeling cold.

• Trouble swallowing: Stress hormones send blood to important organs like the heart, lungs, and liver, leaving less for your muscles. Since your throat is a muscle, it can tighten up and make swallowing harder.

• Feeling sick to your stomach: Cortisol shuts down your stomach so it stops digesting food, while speeding up the rest of your digestive system. This mix can make you feel nauseous.

• Dry mouth: When your stress response is in full swing, your body sends fluid only to the parts it needs most for survival. This can leave your mouth feeling very dry.

• Racing heart: Stress hormones speed up blood flow by 300 to 400 percent! Your heart has to beat faster to pump all that blood to your muscles and organs, which is why you can feel it pounding.

• Trouble concentrating: Stress hormones affect your short-term memory so you can focus completely on the danger in front of you. They also help your brain store the memory of the stressful event for later, so you'll know how to react next time. This makes it hard to concentrate on anything else.

• Headaches: These are common with long-term stress. Scientists think tight muscles in your head and neck are partly to blame. Also, chemicals in your brain tell blood vessels to shrink, so less blood reaches your head — and that can cause a headache.

• Trouble sleeping: On a normal day, your energy hormones (epinephrine and norepinephrine) stay steady, then drop in the evening while your sleep hormone (serotonin) increases. But under long-term stress, your body keeps making epinephrine and norepinephrine, which block serotonin — making it hard to fall asleep.

• Appetite changes: Some people crave more food under stress, while others lose their appetite. Certain foods — like candy, soda, or ice cream — raise serotonin levels and can improve your mood, which is why people crave them. Everyone's cravings are different. (Remember: eating healthy foods gives you energy and helps protect you from stress!)

• Sudden anger: Stress can make you feel overwhelmed and helpless, which can lead to angry outbursts. You may find you don't have as much patience as usual.

1. Understanding why your body reacts this way can actually help you feel less embarrassed about it — and sometimes even help calm the symptoms down.

1. Remember: feeling stressed is never an excuse to be unkind to others or to skip your responsibilities at school or home.

1. If your class isn't doing another BAM! activity about stress, ask your teacher for the "Feeling Frazzled?" tip sheet, which has 10 ideas for relieving stress.

Going Further

Explore the "Got Butterflies?" feature online. It reviews all the short-term and long-term signs of stress and gives you ideas for beating it. If you don't have internet access, your teacher can print this out for you as homework.