We are not all the same when it comes to our reactions to stress, I rediscovered on Tuesday afternoon during a workshop sponsored by the International Brain Research Organization to mark Women’s History Month.
For example, the idea that our bodies’ involuntary stress reactions serve us well in the case of acute stress (short-term) but can cause harm when the stress is continued or chronic, may not be true for most of us, suggested Victoria Luine of Hunter College. She was one of the three main speakers during the session, called “Stress and the Brain: Effects on Addiction, Cognition and Well Being” and held at the Cosmos Club (which for its first 110 years was the most exclusive male-only club in Washington, DC).
“These relationships were determined scientifically in adult males,”
she said. “The male response is fight or flight, but is the female’s?” She and others have been testing these other populations (in the rat world), and in some memory tasks, some cell-level investigations, and other work, they have found big differences.
[See the rest of this post at the Dana Foundation blog]
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