Controlling your survival urges!

Thirst Increases Pain! A study has shown that going without a drink can make you more sensitive to pain. Australian pain expert Dr Michael Farrell of the Howard Florey Institute in Melbourne and team report their findings in today’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

What is more impressive is the greater understanding these scientists are gaining about our ability to control our survival urges relating to pain and thirst. Discovering how our brains prioritize pain and thirst in order to survive will help us understand why some of us have higher tolerance for these high stress conditions. This is the same mechanism that helps elite athletes to ‘push through the pain barrier’ to achieve their goals. In the Martial Arts we learn to control our bodies and then our minds. This research illustrates the impact our environment can have on our ability to maintain that control. From the results of this study it appears that what we learn as Martial Artists is really how to re-prioritize our survival urges thereby achieving what appear to be super-human feats (in some cases!).

“Depending on internal demands being placed on the body, the brain needs to decide which demand is more important to respond to in order to survive,” he said. “Many elite athletes have an ability to balance their priority switch longer than most people so they can push through normal thresholds of pain and thirst whilst competing.” “But when the internal demands become extreme and the body’s physiology is too perturbed, the brain will tell the body ‘enough is enough,'” Dr Farrell said. Basically we all have limits and becoming an elite athlete in any sport means you have to learn were your boundaries. Once you know your boundaries you can begin to press past them and like a good stretch increase the range of your reach. But there is no reason to handicap yourself with stresses that can be avoided, why trigger a survival urge if it can be avoided? So drink some water before your next training session or sparring match. You might be surprised and find you can go a little longer and further than you thought!
[ Source 1, Source 2 ]

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