WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU'RE SCARED?

Have you ever wanted to know the reason why being afraid makes your heart beat faster and leaves you breathless? The body's reaction to the feeling of fear is called the "fight or flight" response and people have had it since the beginning of time.

Let’s see how it works. Imagine you're a primitive person living 200,000 years ago in a cave and you come across a starving lion. You have two options: 1) Escape (that's flight), or 2) battle the lion (that's fight). There is actually a third option – that’s getting eaten – but you wouldn’t choose this, would you?

Today, when that bully picks at you, you can apply fight or flight. You have two choices: 1) Just walk away (flight), or 2) fight, although you know fighting will not solve the problem.

Your body gets prepared for fight or flight by doing some things automatically. Your heart starts beating much faster to pump more blood to your muscles and brain. Your lungs starts taking in air faster to get in more oxygen for your body. The pupils in your eyes get bigger for you to see better. These things help you to run away from what’s scaring you much faster. And your other systems slow down for the moment so you can use that energy on more important things like escaping.