SETTING YOUR STRESS THRESHOLD HIGHER BY ADJUSTING YOUR AUTONOMIC SET-POINT • - Whether you feel alert, calm, sleepy, or stressed is a reflection of the balance between your sympathetic (energy consuming) nervous system, and your parasympathetic (energy conserving) nervous system. Together, these comprise the two major branches of the autonomic nervous system. — You can think of it like a seesaw, the amount of tilt from one side to the other will dictate your overall level of autonomic activity (alert, panicked etc). - How easy or difficult it is to tilt that seesaw depends on your autonomic setpoint. Think of it like the tightness of the hinge on the seesaw. Two things are known to calibrate your automatic setpoint so that you experience less stress from the inevitable stressors of life: 1) Get enough quality sleep. 2) Bias the major wave of your adrenaline (epinephrine) and cortisol release, to the early part of your day. - This likely explains why doing things like taking a cold shower or a cold plunge first thing in the morning or exercising hard early in the morning, allows you to feel less stressed and reactive throughout the day. Provided you don’t train excessively hard or long, it usually provides more energy as well because of the coordinated release of the so-called catecholamines (dopamine, adrenaline, and noradrenaline). - @joerogan has said many times that doing something difficult (that you don’t want to do) early in the day sets the stage for being far less reactive and for other things to feel more tractable throughout the rest of the day. - Adjusting your autonomic setpoint in this way does seem to be a daily requirement. It likely reflects engaging your prefrontal cortex’s ability to exert “top-down” control on your hypothalamus (and other brain areas that drive the stress response). - To learn more about the biology of and protocols for offsetting stress, you can simply put “stress” or “resilience” into the search bar at Hubermanlab.com - Thank you for your interest in science! - @hubermanlab @stanford.med @stanford - #neuroscience #science #ciencia #neurosciencia #stress #autonomic #calibrate #setpoint #threshold