The Body-Mind Connection of Stress

Section: Your Life

Investigative Questions

What does your body do when it feels stress? What is the "fight or flight" response? What actually happens inside your body that causes stress symptoms like a fast heartbeat or a dry mouth?

Description of Activity

In this activity, you'll fill out a checklist about how your own body reacts to stress, and your class will turn the results into a graph. Then you'll work with a partner to learn more about the body mechanisms — the inner workings — that cause physical stress symptoms, such as a racing heart, cold hands, and a dry mouth. Some stress symptoms last longer, like headaches and trouble sleeping. Finally, you'll talk about your own reactions to stress and learn that most of these reactions are simply your body working the way it's supposed to. You'll also look at healthy ways to handle stress.

Objectives

By the end of this activity, you will be able to:

• Look closely at your own physical responses to stress
• Explain the "fight or flight" response to stress
• Understand the physical reactions your body has under stress, including how hormones are involved
• Draw conclusions about what happens inside your body when you're stressed
• Describe the wide range of normal ways people respond to stress
• Build a bar graph using class data

Background Information

The human body automatically reacts to stress by releasing hormones — chemicals made by glands and carried through the blood — that control heart rate and breathing. This gives the body extra energy to either fight the danger or run from it. That's why scientists call this the "fight or flight" response. It's not just a human thing — animals show this response too. (In this activity, we use a cat as an example to help show that physical reactions to stress happen in animals as well as people.)

According to the National Institutes of Health and other experts, the stress response starts with hormones. Two glands in the brain — the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland — work together with the adrenal glands, which sit on top of your kidneys, to control the hormones that help your body handle change or stressful situations. Here's how it works: the hypothalamus sends a signal to the pituitary gland, which then signals the adrenal glands to release three stress hormones — epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. These chemicals speed up your heart rate and breathing, giving you a quick burst of energy to fight or flee. They also affect other parts of your body. This chain reaction can cause a wide range of physical symptoms, including headaches, dry mouth, trouble swallowing, a racing heart, nausea (feeling sick to your stomach), cold hands, trouble concentrating, difficulty sleeping, cravings for certain foods, and sudden anger.

Research done to create the BAM! Body and Mind™ website showed that kids and teens worry a lot about stress in their lives and want to learn how to manage it. Parents want to help too.

This lesson suggests using two parts of the BAM! website: the "Got Butterflies?" game and the "Feelin' Frazzled?" page, which gives 10 tips for relieving stress. Take a look at them ahead of time if you can. If you don't have easy internet access, you can still complete this lesson without them.

Materials

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

Safety

Follow your classroom's normal safety rules.

---

Procedure

Getting Started (10 minutes)

1. Before learning about your body's chemical reactions to stress, you'll first check in with yourself about how your own body reacts. Your teacher will hand out Student Reproducible 1: Taking Stock: My Body's Reaction to Stress.

1. Look at the drawing of the cat and read the information at the top of the page. Think about whether you've ever seen a cat react to something stressful — maybe a dog ran by, another cat wandered into its space, or it was time for a vet visit. What did the cat do? Talk about this briefly with your class.

1. Notice that cats don't have to think about how to respond — the "fight or flight" response just happens automatically. Talk about other adaptations (special features) that animals have to deal with danger. For example, porcupines release their quills, and dogs growl. Can you think of other animal reactions you've seen?

1. Remember that humans have this same built-in response. The instinct to fight or flee is hardwired into our bodies — meaning it's built in and automatic, not something we choose.

Exploring (15 minutes)

1. Fill out the self-assessment. Think about the different ways your body physically reacts to stress.

1. Once everyone finishes, your class will combine the results into a bar graph. You might do this together in class, or your teacher may have you collect the data in class and build the graph as homework. (One helpful tool for making graphs online is the National Center for Education Statistics' "Create a Graph" website.)

Here's an example of what a bar graph like this might look like.

Explaining (20 minutes)

1. Your teacher will hand out Student Reproducible 2: Cold Hands, Fast Heart: The Body's Physiological Reaction to Stress. Now you'll learn why your body reacts the way it does.

1. Hormones are the chemicals responsible for the "fight or flight" response in both animals and people. Remember, hormones are made by glands and travel through the bloodstream to affect organs in your body.

1. Read through Student Reproducible 2 and study the diagram of the body. Then review, as a class, which glands and hormones control your body's stress responses. The hypothalamus and pituitary gland (in the brain) and the adrenal glands (on top of the kidneys) work together to help your body cope with change or stress. The hypothalamus signals the pituitary gland, which signals the adrenal glands to release the stress hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol. These hormones speed up your heart rate and breathing to give you a burst of energy, and they affect other body functions too. (Note: one more hormone, serotonin, is mentioned below — it boosts good feelings and helps regulate sleep.)

1. As you review how stress affects the body, try to explain the physical reason behind each stress symptom before checking the answer. The first six symptoms below usually happen with short-term stress. The rest — headaches, trouble sleeping, appetite changes, and sudden anger — usually happen with long-term stress.

Guide for Understanding Stress Symptoms

• Cold hands: Stress hormones rushing through your blood pull blood away from your skin and send it to your heart and muscles instead, giving them more strength. This can leave your hands and feet feeling cold.
• Trouble swallowing: Stress hormones send blood to important organs like the heart, lungs, and liver, leaving less blood for your muscles. Since your throat is a muscle, it can tighten up and make swallowing difficult.
• Nausea: Cortisol, one of the stress hormones, temporarily shuts down digestion in your stomach while speeding up activity in the rest of your digestive tract. This mismatch can make you feel sick to your stomach.
• Dry mouth: Once your stress response is in full swing, your body sends blood only to the parts it needs most for survival. With so much fluid heading to your organs, your mouth can become very dry.
• Fast heartbeat: Stress hormones can speed up blood flow by 300–400%. Your heart has to beat faster to pump all that extra blood to your organs and muscles — which is why you can feel your heart pounding.
• Trouble concentrating: Stress hormones affect your short-term memory so you can focus completely on the "danger" in front of you. At the same time, they signal your brain to store the stressful event in your long-term memory, so you'll know how to react if something similar happens again. Because of this shift in focus, it can be hard to concentrate on anything else.
• Headaches: Headaches are a common sign of long-term stress. Experts aren't completely sure why, but tight muscles in your head and neck are usually part of the cause. Chemical messengers in your brain also cause blood vessels to constrict (get smaller), which means less blood reaches your head — and that can trigger a headache.
• Trouble sleeping: On a normal, stress-free day, your energy hormones (epinephrine and norepinephrine) stay steady, then naturally drop in the evening as serotonin — the hormone that helps you sleep — takes over. But when you're stressed for a long time, your body keeps producing epinephrine and norepinephrine, which block serotonin and make it hard to fall asleep.
• Appetite changes: Stress often changes how hungry you feel — some people crave food, others lose their appetite. Certain foods boost serotonin levels, which can improve your mood, so many people crave sweets like candy, soda, or ice cream when stressed. Cravings are different for everyone. (Remember: eating healthy foods gives you energy and helps protect you against stress.)
• Sudden anger: Stress can make you feel helpless and overwhelmed, which can trigger angry outbursts. You simply don't have as much patience as you normally would.

1. For many people, understanding what's really happening inside their bodies — what you just learned — makes them feel less embarrassed about their stress symptoms, and can even help relieve them.

1. Keep in mind: feeling stressed is never an excuse to be hurtful toward others, or to skip your responsibilities at school or at home.

1. If your class isn't doing the separate BAM! activity called "Feeling Frazzled? Stress and What to Do About It," your teacher may hand out the "Feeling Frazzled?" tip sheet, which offers 10 suggestions for relieving stress.

Going Further and Checking Understanding (time depends on computer access)

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

---

Scoring Guide: The Body-Mind Connection of Stress

For each skill below, you'll be rated from 3 (highest) to 0 (lowest):

Skill	Rating
Completed the self-assessment of personal physical reactions to stress	3 2 1 0
Described the "fight or flight" response in animals and humans	3 2 1 0
Used class data to build a bar graph showing classmates' stress reactions	3 2 1 0
Analyzed and drew conclusions about personal reactions to stress	3 2 1 0
Explored the body's physical reactions to stress, including the role of hormones	3 2 1 0

Extension

Some students may be interested in learning more about animal behavior. Have the...