analgesia

stress

is the fact of not feeling pain in moments of trauma.

As the battle fades, someone will point with amazement at his injury didn't it hurt like hell' It didn't. Such stress-induced analgesia is highly adaptive and well documented. If you are that zebra and injured, you still have to escape. Now would not be a particularly clever time to go into shock from, extreme pain. Finally, during stress, shifts occur in cognitive and sensory skills. Suddenly certain aspects of memory improve, which is always helpful if you're g to figure out how to get out of an emergency (has this happened before' is there a good hiding place'). Moreover, your senses become sharper. Think about watching a terrifying movie on television, on the edge of your seat at the tensest part. The slightest noise-a creaking doorand you nearly jump out of your skin. Better memory, sharper detection of sensations-all quite adaptive and helpful. (Sapolsky 'why do zebras' .pdf)

is a physiological system that has evolved for responding to short-term acute physical emergencies. In modern life we so often turn on this emergency system for months on end worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions, resulting in a multitude of stress-related diseases.

This is the critical point of this book: if you are that zebra running for your life, or that lion sprinting for your meal, your body's physiological response mechanisms are superbly adapted for dealing with such short-term physical emergencies. When we sit around and worry about stressful things, we turn on the same physiological responses-but they are potentially a disaster when provoked chronically. A large body of evidence suggests that stress-related disease emerges, predominantly out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions. (Sapolsky 'why do zebras' .pdf)

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