Adrenaline rush

Did you know why your heartbeat gets faster when you find yourself in a dangerous or fearful situation? It happens because your body releases ‘adrenaline.’ This hormone helps your body to face a ‘fight or flight’ situation. The adrenaline rush benefits you with the energy to take action in these kinds of situations that help save your life.  

Learn about the positive and negative effects of adrenaline rush in this article. 

Adrenaline is a hormone that is produced by the adrenal gland (which is situated on the top of the kidneys). It is also known as epinephrine.  

It has many functions when you face stressful situations such as increasing your heart rate, decreasing the ability to sense/feel pain, increasing your strength, increasing the blood sugar levels in the bloodstream, improving vision, increasing thinking and decision-making ability to make decisions faster, etc. to do all the necessary things to save one’s life.  

Although it works as a defense mechanism to protect you in dangerous situations, if you constantly feel stressed for a long time- it leads to high adrenaline levels and it produces negative effects on the body.  

What happens during an adrenaline rush? 

Adrenaline is always released when you feel stressed, in a dangerous situation, and feel fear even when no real danger is present. This release happens very quickly (in a few seconds) and stays until the threat/dangerous situation is gone. This extremely fast release of adrenaline hormones is called the adrenaline rush.  

When adrenaline is released in our body, many changes happen: 

• Increase in your heart rate, feels like your heart is racing, also called thumping in your heart,  
• Increased blood flow to the muscles, makes us feel our muscles tight with full of energy 
• Relax airways so that more oxygen is given to your muscles, making your breath shallow 
• Increased blood sugar levels in the bloodstream give an instant surge of energy to your brain so that the focus and thinking ability get enhanced so that you can come up with a solution/escape plan for the dangerous/life-threatening situation. 
• Widening of the pupils of your eyes so that more light can enter so that you can see more clearly 

Although all these functions can help you to save your life- later you might feel exhausted, light-headed, irritable, low on energy, excessive sweating, shivering, low body temperature, etc. after the effects are gone. Usually, it takes 20 – 30 minutes to make a full recovery to make your body start working normally again. But, rarely, the effects of an adrenaline rush can stay for up to 1 hour in your body. 

 Effects 

As your body can instantly release the adrenaline/epinephrine hormone whenever you feel stressed or are facing dangerous situations and make changes in your body to survive those situations, the effects are seen immediately.  

The dangerous/life-threatening situations occur once in a while (and for a shorter period) like watching a horror movie, giving an interview for the first time, or being stuck in a building when there is an earthquake happening, etc. the effects of an adrenaline rush are considered positive as it gives you the power and strength to face those situations fearlessly and confidently to help you survive those situations.  

But in cases where you feel stressed or depressed (due to some reasons) where no real danger is present -your body still releases adrenaline and other stress hormones which produce energy but doesn’t use it, which not only has harmful effects on the body but it can lead to health-related problems such as damages to your blood vessels, increase the chances of heart attack or stroke, insomnia, weight gain, headaches, anxiety, etc. If you suffer from panic or stress attacks in your everyday life, you should visit an endocrinology specialist to know how you can manage them.  Book your appointment to meet the best endocrinologists at Doral Health & Wellness to know the techniques that help to lead a healthy and peaceful life. 

Adrenaline is released as the defense mechanism that helps you to survive any situations that seem dangerous. But this hormone is also released when you feel stress, anxiety, or depression which is bad for long-term stress situations as it leads to health-related problems. So, to prevent those problems try to apply stress relaxation techniques to reduce your stress.  

Want to know more? At Doral Health and Wellness, we have doctors that can help you manage your condition. For more information, you can visit us at 1797 Pitkin Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11212, or call us on 1-347-384-5690. You can also visit our website at https://doralhw.org or contact us at info@doralhw.org if you have any queries.