It's All in Your Mouth by Dominik Nischwitz

Author:Dominik Nischwitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

The Autonomic Nervous System

Many people regard the meridian system as alternative mumbo jumbo. But today we know that meridian pathways are simply points of the autonomic nervous system that are particularly easy to stimulate: our internal data motorways.

We send the signals for many of the things our bodies do—to run away, say, or to jump on one leg, or to wink at someone—and our bodies respond accordingly. But there are certain functions they don’t let us have a say in—functions they prefer to be in charge of. We can’t stop the digestive system, for example, and we’re not able to control our salivary glands. The blood flows through our veins whether we like it or not, and even our lungs can breathe by themselves. Our organisms have to constantly adapt to an unpredictable and changing environment and the situations we put them through. We put ourselves into a state of shock by walking out in front of cars or by shoving three chocolate bars into ourselves, one after the other.

For our bodies, this means either cooling us down or warming us up. The body shoots adrenaline through our veins so that we can jump out of danger in time and lowers blood sugar levels that have shot through the ceiling after the chocolate bars. We all have our own internal thermostat, which keeps our most important parameters constantly within a certain range. The puppet master behind these magical processes is called our autonomic nervous system. It establishes a constant balance in the body because it has two major counterparts: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

The Sympathetic Nervous System

The sympathetic nervous system is the activating part of the autonomic nervous system. It’s responsible for what is known as the fight-or-flight response—the reactions we need to either escape from danger or fight it. The sympathetic nervous system is what causes each of the following vital body reactions to be triggered:

It tightens our blood vessels to make the heart pump faster.

It activates muscles to make us run faster.

It boosts our energy and widens our pupils.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.