if you're like me you woke up on Jan 1st
2020 like hashtag new year new me babe
made yourself a smoothie started to
meditate and then BAM
we're at World War 3 memes started we
kept refreshing Twitter we watched the
news obsessively and honestly I felt
weirdly fascinated by the concept of war
a variety of psychological studies have
found that soldiers who returned from
war actually end up missing it we all
clamor to the cinema to watch movies
about war and it turns out there is a
reason why it has to do with our shared
history and your body archeologists
believe that we were less violent as
hunter-gatherers because we were more
nomadic and we had less possessions
essentially we just had less to fight
over now I stay put in my home I have
things like my phone which I'm literally
in love with and if anyone does touch
her though she'll feel bad laughs as
humans when we started to stay put
create agriculture build walls and
borders and our populations grew that's
when the concept of a large-scale war
actually began and our physiological
response to it created an innate
fascination your body is controlled by
the brain and nervous system which is
acted on by hormones hormones are
chemical messengers released from glands
in your body that influence the nervous
system to regulate your behavior and
physiology if you are experiencing armed
conflict firsthand playing call of duty
or even just reading about an impending
war your brain will initiate a stress
response the hypothalamus will release
corticotropin-releasing hormone which
acts on the pituitary gland of the brain
to release adrenaline tropic hormone
into your bloodstream at this point the
ACTH is pumping through your body where
it ends up passing through these little
adorable adrenal glands that chill on
the top of your kidneys these glands use
the ACTH signal to now release
adrenaline and noradrenaline into your
blood which act on receptors throughout
your body your heart rate increases your
breath quickens blood vessels constrict
and you experience a feeling that is
unsettling and thrilling known as the
fight-or-flight response designed over
years of human evolution to protect you
from danger your physical strength is
temporarily increased your body has a
decreased ability to feel pain and
other hormones like cortisol and
dopamine are released which make your
attention hyper focused the stress
response is a natural high a natural
biological process where you become
focused hyper present and amped to fight
the neuroscientist Jim Foss explains
that by activating your arousal and
attention systems stressors can also
wake up the neural circuitry underlying
wanting and craving just like drugs do
the stress created by playing Call of
Duty or watching a war movie is a really
clever way to target this system and the
Hollywood Machine does a good job at
creating a lot of war movies that feed
into this biological urge you get to
leave the theater and go home and return
to home yo stasis because you're safe
and sound which is one theory why
civilians make it a rush from these
movies because for the most part we'll
never have to face war as for the
soldiers who have returned from war and
claim that they miss it the studies show
that they have become accustomed to
these higher levels of stress and
therefore they feel that it's necessary
to feel that stress all the time their
brains will be wanting to seek out these
feel-good hormones and this leads them
to think that they miss the stress of
war although acute stress may lead to a
natural high chronic stress has
extremely negative effects on your body
especially due to the hormone cortisol
which over time decreases your immune
function causes impaired digestion
increased nervousness susceptibility to
infection fear and desensitization if
stressors are too strong and too
persistent and individuals who are
biologically vulnerable it can lead to
disease living life is to be an
impressionist dance with stress a
biological response that the concept of
war hijacks if people don't understand
that the body can actually crave acute
stress then we may end up treating war
like a thrilling game and if that's the
case with our world leaders then we may
all be in danger which is ironic because
we evolved the fight-or-flight response
to keep us safe from immediate danger
but if we don't understand it properly
it may be the exact biological response
that leads to another sad devastating
war during these precarious times it
does feel scary so you can share this
video with people so they can understand
more about what's happening and their
thanks for watching and we will see you
next week for a new science video