What Are the Physical And Mental Effects Of Fear
What is the greatest threat to humanity right now? Spend three or four minutes thinking about it. Natural disaster? Nuclear catastrophe? Global warming? Got any other ideas? Chances are you’re wrong.
Thanks to the efforts of concerned scientists, we now know that fear is the greatest threat facing human beings today. It has more power than any external force or influence to profoundly affect your physical and emotional well-being over your lifetime. A human being living in the grip of fear spends his life living a fate worse than any victim of nuclear fallout.
Does that sound hyperbolic? It isn’t. A recent study orchestrated by the World Health Organization examined the physical and mental ramifications of three of the biggest nuclear disasters in recent history: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And what they found was that the greatest threat to the health of victims of these tragedies wasn’t cancer. It was the insidious effects of their fear of developing cancer.
That’s right. Fear posed a bigger physical threat to victims of nuclear fallout than the radiation itself.
According to John Boice Jr., cancer epidemiologist, nuclear radiation only slightly increases your risk of getting cancer (about 1/10th the risk of smoking cigarettes). But people fear the effects of radiation much more than they fear the effects of smoking. And as it turns out, those exposed to radiation were so afraid that they might have cancer that many did not seek treatment.
Although 99 percent of the cancers at Chernobyl (for instance) were treatable, fear made some wait until it was too late. Nuclear radiation didn’t kill them, their fear did. A 2003 study of HIV/AIDS sufferers by the University of California Psychology Department yielded similar results. Their fear of a death sentence made them avoid seeking the treatment that would turn their diagnosis from a death sentence to a manageable condition.
And if causing otherwise preventable fatalities was not enough, fear also directly causes sickness and sometimes death. You don’t need an academic study on a global scale to tell you that fear affects you physically. Think about the last time you watched a scary movie or spent weeks fearing an outcome. Your heart raced, you couldn’t sleep, you sweated profusely. You may have lost consciousness. What you experienced was your body’s autonomic response to fear.
Anxiety attacks are perhaps the most acute physical manifestations of fear. An anxiety attack causes your heart to beat so rapidly that many rush to the emergency room. Until recently, those fears were thought to be unsubstantiated.. But Time recently reported on a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that proved that frequent acute bouts of fear and anxiety does in fact increase your risk of heart attack.
But according to Stephen Co, lecturer and founder of Pranic Healing, by the time most people feel the physical effects of fear that intensely, they have been suffering for quite some time. For most people, the constant undertow of fear they feel on a daily basis has similarly subdued physical effects. According to a 2007 study published by the International Institute for Society and Health, living with fear over a long period of time results in reduced physical functioning. Your organ systems stop functioning at their peak. Healthy individuals have a lower quality of life, get sicker more often and stay sicker longer. People with compromised systems suffer exacerbated effects of their illness. But as most are unaware of the cause, their weakened condition begins to feel like the status quo.
Fear’s effect on your mental health can work in similarly hard-to-detect ways. Think about what you wanted to be when you grew up. Why hasn’t that happened for you yet? Most of us conclude that our goals just weren’t probable, that life got in the way. But for many, fear is the answer. We all know someone with good looks, intelligence and talent that never made anything of their lives. It’s their fear that keeps them trapped and prevents them from reaching the heights of someone with half of the potential.
Fear has manufactured a prison for them that is smaller than their potential boundaries. According to a 2001 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, one of fear’s sneakiest tricks is convincing us that the realm of possibility is more limited than it really is. It causes risk avoiding behavior. It tells us that we are not good enough or smart enough and robs us of what could have been.
The thing that all rich and successful people have is the ability to allay their fears. They’re not better or more talented than the rest of us. They simply have the ability to see what they want and go get it, fear be damned. That’s why some very talented people sing in the subway while other less talented, people make millions and tour the world. For more of this Article,GO TO: http://www.newsonhealthcare.com/the-physical-and-mental-effects-of-fear/
Sam Davis’ answer provided an excellent analysis of the overall effects of fear on society. But fear also takes a toll on our physical bodies.
When we are frightened (or angered) our endocrine system’s positive feedback loop floods the body with hormones that prepares us for a desperate fight or panicked flight. When extreme fright is experienced the body may void urine or empty the colon spontaneously; blood is diverted to the muscles; oxygen uptake is drastically increased; the heart pumps faster, filling the arteries with oxygen and hormone rich blood. The muscles increase tonus. When frightened, within seconds you will be as prepared as your body will ever be to either fight to the death or run as if your life depends on escape. The effects of fear on the brain and the body’s systems is duplicated by the effects of stress– the body can’t tell the difference.
Sustained stress depletes the endocrine glands, causes the formation of painful trigger points, which in turn leads to exhausting muscle hypertonia. Stress creates emotional problems as well: we can become hyper-critical of ourselves and others, so relationships suffer; mental acuity will also decrease because so much of the body’s resources have been diverted. We may develop alternating bouts of diarrhea and constipation; the heightened peristalsis may push excess stomach acid into the esophagus.
Drugs used to reverse the effects of stress have their own bad effects. A few minutes of quiet contemplation off in a corner can provide the body with the respite it needs to complete the negative feedback loop which will return the body to homeostasis.
I use psychotropic preparations very rarely, prefer to take off stress independently, but sometimes, after a strong psychological overstrain, dream old age comes fully. In these cases of medication xanax for the night and a quiet long dream is provided.
