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LINK: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 29 June 2008 Issue

There is a common notion that human beings often survive life or death and even emergency situations because of the so-called ‘adrenaline rush’. It is a situation where the processes in the human anatomy automatically react or respond to a given situation which the mind perceives to be critical.

In science, adrenaline, or epinephrine, is a hormone produced by the adrenal gland found directly above the kidney of the human body. They say that when adrenaline is secreted into the bloodstream, the hormone prepares the body for action by boosting the supply of oxygen and glucose to the brain and muscles while reducing considerably non-emergency processes in the body like that of digestion. Short bursts of physical prowess results from dilated blood vessels and air passages that makes the body pass more blood to the muscles as more oxygen are put in into the lungs in a timely and precise manner.

They say that the discovery of the adrenaline as a substance produced by the adrenal gland was first reported in May 1886 by American physician William Bates in the New York Medical Journal. It  was Napoleon Cybulski, a Polish physiologist and a pioneer of endocrinology, who isolated and identified the substance in 1895. German chemist Friedrich Stolz, however, was the first person to synthesize the hormone artificially in 1904.

Since the hormone causes an increase in heart rate and stroke volume, constricts the small blood vessels in the skin but dilates the arterioles in skeletal muscles, the pupils and air passages, starts the breakdown of lipids in fat cells, elevates blood sugar and suppresses the immune system, they say that it is important to douse the adrenaline released in the human system after a stressful situation. Before, this is done naturally because man is habitualy engaged in a lot of physical activity. But in today’s world where human exertion is less, the amount of adrenaline left in the body results in insomnia, palpitations, high blood pressure, and restive nerves.
 
In 1915, American physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon theorized the so-called ‘fight-or-flight’ response by holding that animals react to threats through a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system that prepares the animals either to flee or to fight. And they say that this response system was later recognized as the first stage of a general adaptation syndrome which regulates stress reaction among vertebrates and other organisms. Thus, the ‘fight-or-flight’ response is often used to characterize the situation known as adrenaline rush.

To be sure there is always the adrenaline that serves as a lifeline in every severe and extemporaneous situation man is confronted with. But summoning the aid and comfort of this hormone in normal times would only mean stress, a condition that produces unneeded bodily strain and causes much of the physical maladies and human ailments known in today’s world.  Unfortunately, this is how nature works.

If human beings would only heed this law of nature, they would realize that life is all about perfecting or working for that state of constant peace and tranquility in this hectic, fast-paced and crazier world. And it is all because everyone has this adrenaline that rushes automatically in times of great need. 

Reality dictates that putting the adrenaline to work unnecessarily could spell the end of life.

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