How Stress Affects the Body
Acute stress prepares the body for action by ramping up metabolism, actually catabolism or the breakdown of food, including old and devitalized organic tissue(by autophagy) to provide energy, usually in the final form of ATP, to help the body move. The immune system is shut down with cortisol, the stress hormone, to optimize the energy resources needed to fend off or escape from danger. Tissue repair and growth are slowed down by this hormone, for the time-being, for a similar reason. There is the release of stored food and digestion of devitalized or damaged tissue. This happens through adrenaline and glucagon which mobilize glucose and fats and then stimulate corresponding insulin release that enables cells assimilate glucose. Phosphorylation inside the cells increases--of insulin receptor and glucose and these become more chemically active and cAMP levels rise. Glycolysis increases and the Krebs cycle in the mitochondria matrix provides reduced(non-oxidized) intermediates which t...