What’s ideal under basal conditions is different than during stress, something central to allostatic thinking.

He formulated the well-known “fight-or-flight” syndrome to describe the stress-response,

It was acting erratically because, it turned out, the pituitary didn’t really have the whole hormonal game plan. It would normally be following orders from the brain,

stress can make us sick, and a critical shift in medicine has been the recognition that many of the damaging diseases of slow accumulation can be either caused or made far worse by stress.

The sympathetic nervous system kicks into action during emergencies, or what you think are emergencies.

A stressor can also be the anticipation of that happening.

the interactions between stress and sleep,

(Adrenaline and noradrenaline are actually British designations; the American terms, which will be used from now on, are epinephrine and norepinephrine.)

colleagues. If you repeatedly turn on the stress-response, or if you cannot turn off the stress-response at the end of a stressful event, the stress-response can eventually become damaging.