I Always Get Sick When My Exams Approach. What Could Be The Reason?

This question was originally posted on Quora and answered by Michael J. Tran.

I've mentioned this before in my other answers.

Stress.

It's a silent killer.

Humans are animals; all animals have a sympathic nervous system; all animals undergo stress.

Stress mentally is the same as physical stress. See animals on the plains of Africa? A lion chased them, they undergo a stress responses (fight or flight, mainly they flight), this stress response last seconds, because all it takes is seconds to either escape sucessfully or become a meal.

The same thing happens mentally, but now we remove a physical variable. The lion is now the test.

Without stress we would have no motivation. Too much stress and our health declines.

So this is what's happening. You see a threat (test/exam). Your body knows it's a threat. The pathways for physical and cognitive stress are the same, they don't differ. Your body recognizes a threat, said threat is treated as dangerous.

Sympathetic nervous system (think PNS, CNS, peripheral/central) is stimulated. Said stimulation causes a release of adreanaline, increase heart rate, and ceases unimportant bodily functions: digestion, growth,REM sleep, immune function, all cease to work, because why? Because you're running from a lion. Why do you need to digest, grow, sleep, fend disease when your life could potentially end in less than 10 seconds?

Stress is good; it keeps us alive. Prolonged stress is unnatural, a product of our unnatural enviroment tapping into our natural pathways.

So chronic stress equals prolonged decrease immune function and other bodily functions as Well as the release of adrenaline (think stressful like an aggressive cornered dog about to fight for its life, hence crankiness), slowed metabolic function = fat storage, and now we have the release of cortisol (stress hormone) which too much for too lunch is haphazard to our health.

There you go!



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