Dr. Ida Fonkoue

But after stress, we did not see that higher response that we expected.

So we were wondering if there was some sort of a ceiling effect, as if it was so high that it couldn't go higher.

But with the vascular response,

what we're seeing in young women here with this vasoconstriction so vessel getting tight you know what happened with vasoconstriction is that if your vessels are tighter which is what vasoconstriction is and they can really open up and be flexible and adapt to an influx of blood that is coming when you're stressed because when you're stressed you need more blood to go to your

muscle to go to your brain you have to think you have to run if you need to run so vasoconstriction is not what we want at that time because blood pressure is even going to go higher we want blood to be able blood vessel to be able to adapt

to that flow of blood coming in.

So we're seeing in these young women already something that is not, something that is abnormal in the response of their blood vessel to stress.

So I'm really interested to see what we'll see with the fight or flight.

Are we going to see what we saw with black men, where there was like already a plateau effect, or are we going to see the trend that we're seeing with vascular function, which is

higher fight or flight in response to stress.

That's a good question you're asking.

And again, my disclaimer is that I'm not a clinical psychologist.

But what I will say is that the gold standard for the diagnosis of PTSD is

It's called the clinician-administered PTSD scale.

Okay.

Or called CAPS.

The reason why it's a clinician-administered one is because it's not a survey.

You're not given a survey that you answer.

It's an interview.

It usually takes about an hour, an hour and a half.