Those highly competitive types who boast that they thrive on stress are living in a fantasy world

Those highly competitive types who boast that they thrive on stress are living in a fantasy world :

No one can healthily sustain the heightened alertness, quick burst of energy, rapid heart rate, elevated blood pressure, and other marks of the fight-or-flight response. Physically, the hormone rush must come to an end, leading to the opposite state -- you become drowsy, lose energy, and have a hard time remaining alert and focused. So-called adrenaline junkies deliberately induce an aroused state because they enjoy being highly aroused, and they presumably value the courage, euphoria, and killer instinct that the stress response brings.

What they overlook is the down side and the physical damage done to various parts of the body, since various processes like growth, digestion and oxygenation of muscles are temporarily shut down during fight-or-flight, which must be considered an abnormal, unbalanced state; no one would deliberately stay there. The low-level stress of modern life fools the body into triggering a borderline condition of fight-or-flight that isn't good for us. "Normal" stresses like being stuck in traffic contribute to hypertension and coronary artery disease, along with susceptibility to infections, insomnia, and much else.

So those highly competitive types who boast that they thrive on stress are living in a fantasy world when you consider the potential for damage to their bodies. The most recent studies on the genetic effects of exercise, diet, meditation,and stress reduction conducted by Dean Ornish, an expert on reversing heart disease, suggests that a positive lifestyle produces beneficial output form as many as 400-500 genes. This implies that the same genes are adversely affected by a negative lifestyle that ignores stress management.

Om Namah Shivay