These days, many people are experiencing fear because of the coronavirus news that is being bombarded by the mainstream media on a daily basis. Every day, people wake up and see, hear or read the news from the biggest media corporations that are reporting deaths and diseases that are supposedly caused by this disease; deaths that none of the ordinary people can really prove or confirm. Unfortunately, these information cause psychological distress and make the receiver literally sick, affecting not only the mental but also, and most certainly, the physical aspect of the individual.
To understand more about how fear negatively affects the health of a person, let us explore what experts are saying about it. This is very important for all of us to know so that we can dismantle this from our system and therefore enable our mind and body to facilitate healing mechanisms and functions instead of the opposite.
According to Lisa Rankin, a Medical Doctor, when the emotion of fear is being registered on our brain, and by this meaning almost every kind of fear, the hypothalamus is being activated and will trigger the release of corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF) into our nervous system. The prolactin, adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), and growth hormone are then being secreted through the stimulation of pituitary gland. This will cause the release of cortisol, a neuro-hormone that is responsible for “helping the body maintain homeostasis when the brain experiences fear and assumes that a threat is a clear and present danger”.
Similarly, when we are in a state of fear, our brain also triggers the “fight-or-flight” response, or the sympathetic nervous system, causing the release of epinephrine and norepinephrine by the adrenal glands. This will trigger the increase of our blood pressure and pulse and therefor affect other physiological responses. This leads to all sorts of metabolic changes in our body including the increase of stomach acid, the decrease of digestive enzymes, and the suppression of our immune system.
Now imagine if you totally believe what the mainstream media is reporting on a daily basis, think about how it puts your body on a constant stress response. This will constantly disable our system’s ability to perform the mechanism of self-repair; allowing it to break down every day. This, sad to say, damages our organs and allows the growth and multiplication of free radicals that is the cause of the insults and the weakening of our immune system and therefor, makes us sick. This stress response, when triggered repetitively, will eventually lead to (or help allow) chronic diseases such as heart problems, high-blood pressure, diabetes, and even cancer.
To counter this and to keep our body healthy, Dr. Lisa Rankin suggests that instead of living in state of fear, we should more often cultivate healthy emotions such as love, optimism, gratitude, compassion, empathy, pleasure, hope, and all sorts of positive thoughts and feelings. To keep our immune response strong, it is also important for us to relax or have enough amount of rest, be creative, be supportive and of course, psychologically strong by taking care of our mental health.
A relax state will allow the self-repair process to effectively work by causing the adrenaline and the cortisol to drop, enabling the parasympathetic nervous system to efficiently activate and therefore, supports our immune system. Most importantly, to break free from fear that is being pushed to us by the mainstream media through fake news, we must simply stop believing them and minimize watching the news on the TV. This, according to Dr. Rankin, is a simple physiological science that effectively enables healing.
If you want to learn more about how to become healthy by countering fear and other related emotional challenges, we highly recommend you to check out this article:
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Featured image: https://www.healthing.ca/diseases-and-conditions/coronavirus/worrying-about-getting-sick-can-make-you-sick
