Under Pressure: The Science of Stress

Under Pressure: The Science of Stress — page 3 — For my family who love me even when I'm stressed T L K Acknowledgments Thank you to Laura Chiarenza for her wisdom and expertise and to the team at Kids Can Press for being generally fabulous You made the creation of this book entirely un stressful Thank you also to researchers such as Yoshifumi Miyazaki who dedicated years to finding ways for us to decrease stress and anxiety And apologies to my son who now has to take long walks in the woods with his family when he'd rather be playing video games

Under Pressure: The Science of Stress — page 4 — Contents Introduction The Sticks and Stones of Stress Chapter 1 Fight Flight or Freeze Chapter 2 The Long Game Chapter 3 Bounce Back Chapter 4 Helpful Highs Chapter 5 Tension Tamers Conclusion Personal Space Further Reading Selected Sources Index

Under Pressure: The Science of Stress — page 5 — Introduction Sticks and Stones The of Stress As the morning bell rings and the principal stalks the hallway you frantically rummage through your locker Binders and papers fly to the floor behind you She's lost her history report whispers one of your friends And her dog's at the vet says another She's a wreck A total basket case We tend to view stress as a bad thing and the names we use for it aren't particularly nice Frazzled Flustered Freaking out But we've all experienced that sweaty heart racing under pressure feeling It's not something we can avoid or escape The roots of stress go back millions of years to when early humans loped through the savanna fighting hyenas and fleeing lions The emergency action hormones and chemicals in our bodies evolved to help us deal with danger And if we feel stress in our school hallways far from the dangers of the savanna we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves We all juggle commitments and responsibilities We manage math tests friendship fractures and family emergencies We have days when we're calm and days when we're anxious We're still learning to adapt those early brain responses to the technology and traffic of modern life Scientists are learning too Each year they discover new information about

Under Pressure: The Science of Stress — page 6 — how our brains grow and change and how we react to the demands of the world around us This book explores the science of anxiety and the history of stress research It examines the effects of pressure on the human body and what we can do about them The book also includes some wacky historical beliefs strange experiments and stories of stressed out stress researchers In the following chapters you'll learn about the fight or flight reaction to sudden danger how people cope with chronic pressure how trauma can affect the brain the ways athletes put pressure to work and the surprising treatments scientists have found for stress in our everyday lives At the end of it all you might be less willing to call yourself a wreck and more likely to admire how well your body and brain work together When the going gets rough that's when your toughest parts get going

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