In a year marked by a pandemic, economic downturn, racial unrest, and an election that culminated with a mob storming the U.S. Capitol, we’ve come face to face with stressors we could never have imagined prior to 2020. The causes and health impacts of stress have been widely discussed as have a host of tools for tackling the mounting anxiety we feel in our daily lives. But cortisol, among the body’s most important steroid hormones, at the helm of our stress response, remains largely a mystery. Is our fight-or-flight response really tied to our prehistoric ancestors? Has our modern world evolved beyond the antiquated workings of our endocrine system? Here’s what we know.
A Caveman Instinct?
Cortisol, along with epinephrine and norepinephrine, activate the body’s sympathetic nervous system, triggering a lineup of physiological responses that speed up respiration, constrict blood vessels, dilate pupils, and slow down the digestive system. It’s called a fight-or-flight response, and it allows muscles to react more powerfully and move faster, priming us to, well, fight or flee. Alan Goodman, a biological anthropologist at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, studies stress in prehistoric humans. He agrees that cortisol and the entire acute stress response system is an evolutionary design.
