Adrenaline: Everything You Need to Know

Bryan Carmichael
Feb 20, 2021
4 min read

Updated: Mar 14, 2021

Note: This is the fourth article of a new series I'm writing titled Everything You Need to Know. If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out my previous articles and stay tuned for all future articles.

Introduction

You’re in a tennis match against someone miles better than you. Your opponent plays big, powerful shots deep in both back corners of the court, making you run to hit them back. Every single time he hits a power shot in the corner, being the slowish weakling you are, something inside you says you won’t get to the ball in time. However, you do. Every single time. You don’t even feel tired getting to them, if anything the opposite. You’re fired up and ready to go. How is it that on any regular day, you couldn’t run if you wanted to, but here in the moment you’re hitting every ball back at your opponent?

Adrenaline is a powerful hormone. It allows us to reach heights we cannot achieve normally. Like all things, there are goods and bads to this hormone, and we will dive into those throughout the course of this article.

What is Adrenaline?

Adrenaline, or Epinephrine, also known as the ‘fight or flight’ hormone, is a hormone released from the adrenal glands and into the bloodstream. It is released when one is in a state of stress, threat, danger or excitement. Note that you aren’t supposed to feel a flow of adrenaline during everyday stress, so if you do, you are way too worried about your life, I would personally suggest relaxation methods such as meditation or watching the weather.

How does it work? When you enter one of the four situations above, your brain sends signals to the emotive processing part of your brain called the amygdala. If the amygdala sees the need to, it will send its own set of signals to the hypothalamus. Using autonomic nerves, the hypothalamus transmits signals to the adrenal glands, which sit on top of the kidneys, to start producing adrenaline. The adrenal glands are split into the outer glands, or the adrenal cortex, and the inner glands, or the adrenal medulla, of which the adrenal medulla produces the adrenaline. The adrenal glands will then release the newly produced adrenaline into your bloodstream, and the hormone has entered your system. In addition, the adrenaline causes your blood vessels to redirect your blood flow to the essential muscle groups, including the heart and the lungs. This causes an increased pain tolerance and a longer physical stamina. If this process happens rapidly, it is known as an adrenaline rush.

Examples where adrenaline rushes occur include:

Cliff jumping
Skydiving
Bungee jumping
Watching a frightening movie
Riding a rollercoaster
Intense competition
Running away from people
- Threatening strangers
- Police (though I really hope not)
Winning the lottery

People who willingly do extreme activities to feel adrenaline rushes are known as adrenaline junkies.

Symptoms of an adrenaline rush include a raised heartbeat, feeling more alert, heightened senses, increased physical strength and stamina, dilated pupils and a decreased ability to feel pain.

Adrenaline was first isolated in 1895 by Polish scientist, Napoleon Cybulski.

The Benefits of Adrenaline

Adrenaline, being a gift of evolution, has its practical benefits. At night, it can help you avoid car accidents. In competitions, it can help you last a lot longer. You sense your surroundings more easily and you have a small feeling of invincibility. It can also make you think quicker, as to make more instinctive decisions when it comes to dangerous situations.

It is good to have adrenaline in these situations because it not only allows for a quicker reaction to your surroundings, but it also analyses the information much faster and comes up with solutions quicker. Essentially, it’s a mental speed booster and a physical strength booster.

How is Adrenaline Harmful?

Although adrenaline is a vital tool to human instinct and survival, as mentioned above, you aren’t supposed to feel adrenaline rushes during stressful situations where you aren’t in danger. If you do, it can cause dizziness, light-headedness, and in more extreme cases, heart damage and insomnia.

Another cause of this could be an overproduction of adrenaline, but this is very rare. It happens when there are tumours on your adrenal glands. It can cause high levels of anxiety, rapid heartbeat and consistently high blood pressures.

Underproduction of adrenaline is also possible, but that’s even more rare than overproduction, it virtually never happens. This is due to the fact that even if both your adrenal glands were removed, a similar hormone named noradrenaline, produced from your sympathetic nerve endings, would fill in as a viable substitute for the missing adrenaline. If it did happen, you would have problems responding to stressful and dangerous situations.

Conclusion

Overall, adrenaline is an interesting and important hormone in our body, as it is responsible for most of our high instinct actions when under stress and pressure. I personally think that the most interesting part about this miracle hormone is its ability to alter mindsets, attitudes and approaches towards situations, basically in an instant. Its physical abilities are also quite interesting.

The fact that our body can do these amazing things with the aid of adrenaline, it leaves me to question why we don’t always function at this level of physical and mental activity. My best guess would be because we would crash trying to consistently operate at such a level. Best to leave it for the important moments.