Norman Swan

speaker

307 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 11 Aug

Norman Swan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

What's That Rash? · How does chronic stress affect the body? · 14 Jul 2026 podcast

I don't know if I like it.

Mine too.

And it's this dumb organ, which is really there to... It's not that dumb, but what I'm saying is you don't have your conscious brain on top.

And what is there is to survey your environment for threats.

and then tell the body, independent of your conscious brain, to get ready for action or relax or whatever it is that's going on.

And so your brain recognizes threats in your environment.

Now, what chronic stress is, it's very much the same bodily response as acute stress, but at a very much lower level.

So the same things get triggered.

The brain picks up a problem in your world

And it says to the rest of the body, hey, guys, something's going on here.

Don't really understand what it is, but we'd better get ready for action.

So blood pressure go up a little bit.

Pulse go up a little bit.

Immune system get ready for action.

Just your inflammation goes up a bit.

Hormones that might be involved in helping us use calories or what have you, you get ready for action like cortisol and so on.

And your body gets into this alert stage, which is very low level, but it's still triggering a system that was originally designed for short bursts when a saber-toothed tiger came towards you or you were in a fight.

But this is prolonged.

And the question is, what triggers chronic stress?

Showing 201–220 of 307 · page 11 of 16