Our body has a defense mechanism in our immunity system since the dawn of the humanity’s time on this earth. A defense mechanism that 4 million years of evolution did not manage to take away.

The fundamental thing that inspires us all to move (or not) is fear. That “unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm”. It triggers the fight or flight survival mode response. And the cascade of hormones that follow. 

Stress is this physiological response to a stimulus: anything that could trigger survival mode. Not only the kind of triggers that seem to signal and impeding apocalypse. It could be physical triggers (hormonal dysregulation), environmental (pollutants), mental (life’s pressures), or dietary (fad dieting).

Whether stress is positive (eustress) or negative (distress), our bodies have the same physiological response and release the same hormones. The objective is to restore the state of internal physiological and psychological balance (homeostasis) that was disrupted by the fight or flight. Each of us has a different stress tolerance level, but when the total number of stressors that we face go over our tolerance threshold, the total load takes us into the danger zone of chronic stress.