U.S. Navy SEAL Guide to SEALSERE Training Secrets by Don Mann

Author:Don Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2012-09-06T04:00:00+00:00

Why Do Some Handle Stress Better Than Others?

Even though SERE School was a “theoretical setting,” it taught me that some people are better at dealing with the stresses and strains of life than others. Why?

Dr. Andy Morgan of Yale Medical School set out to find a real-world laboratory where he could watch people under incredible stress in reasonably controlled conditions. He found one in southeastern North Carolina at Fort Bragg, home of the Army’s elite Airborne and Special Forces. This is where the Army’s renowned survival school (their version of Navy SERE school) is located. It’s also where they practice something called stress inoculation. Based on the concept of vaccines, soldiers are exposed to pressure and

suffering in training in order to build up their immunity. It’s a form of

psychological conditioning: the more shocks to your system, the more you’re able to withstand.

While soldiers are frightened and worn down with sleep deprivation and lack of food, they’re also interrogated using enemy techniques used during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. The sessions are known to be extremely tough.

For Morgan, POW school was the perfect place to study survival under acute stress. Even though the soldiers understood that they were in training, and, therefore, not in serious danger, Morgan’s findings were revealing. During mock interrogations, prisoners’ heart rates skyrocketed to more than 170 beats per minute for more than half an hour, even though they weren’t engaged in any physical activity. Meanwhile, their bodies pumped more stress hormones than the amounts measured in aviators landing on aircraft carriers, troops awaiting ambushes in Vietnam, skydivers taking the plunge, or patients awaiting major surgery. The levels of stress hormones measured were sufficient to turn off the immune system and produce a catabolic state, in which the body starts to break down and feed on itself.

Morgan’s research (which was the first of its kind) produced some fascinating findings in terms of what types of soldiers most successfully resisted the interrogators and stayed focused. Morgan examined two different groups going throughout this training: regular army troops and elite special forces soldiers, who are known to be especially “stress hardy” or cool under pressure. At the start, the two groups were essentially the same. But once the stress began, he saw significant differences. Specifically, the two groups released very different amounts of a chemical in the brain called neuropeptide Y (NPY). NPY is an amino acid produced by our bodies that helps regulate blood pressure, appetite, learning, and memory. It also works as a natural tranquilizer, controlling anxiety and buffering the effects of stress hormones like norepinephrine—also known as adrenaline. In essence, NPY is used by the brain to block alarm and fear responses and keep the frontal lobe working under stress.

Morgan found that special forces are superior survivors because they produce significantly greater levels of NPY compared with regular troops. And, twenty-four hours after completing survival training, NPY levels in Special Forces soldiers returned to normal, while those in regular soldiers remained significantly lower.

With much more NPY in their systems, special forces soldiers really

are special.

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.