How we use our sense of taste during fight or flight and how to use it to relieve stress.
Last but not least! We have arrived at the end of our series about the body’s increased senses during the fight or flight response and how we can use the senses to help us calm down in times of stress. This final blog in the series will focus on the fascinating sense of taste.
Taste has long been used to describe emotions such as “sweet as pie,” “a bitter pill to swallow,” and “attitude sour as a lemon” so it’s no wonder why we can associate our sense of taste to relieving stresses. The bigger question is how the body uses taste in the fight or flight response.
Our prehistoric ancestors used first, smell and then taste to determine what is healthy for us to eat. If it was bitter or sour, we stayed away because it could have been perceived as dangerous. Sweet, salty and savory were deemed as beneficial to us and packed with nutrients. Taste was, and is still used, to aid in survival however, that is not a fight or flight scenario. Actually, there have been no studies pertaining to the relation between our sense of taste and the fight or flight response.
As you may know, taste involves our sense of smell. A lesser-known fact is that it also involves our hearing! So, when it comes to stressors and our sense of taste, things get a little more complicated in how our body reacts.
If you’ve read the previous four blog posts then you’ll remember that during fight or flight, the body’s sympathetic nervous system is triggered and gives the body extra sensitivity and energy to respond to perceived dangers. With our sight, it triggers us to pick up on visual cues more, or may have us not seeing anything at all, depending on the threat and how our body chooses to cope… fight or flight. With our hearing, the reaction can cause us to be more sensitive to sound and with smell, it can trigger memory recall. With taste, both our senses of smell and hearing must be activated in order to activate our sense of taste.
Tho there has been no studies done pertaining to the relation of the body’s fight or flight response and the sense of taste, however, they have studied the effects of acute stress and taste. They have found that when people are experiencing stress, their sense of taste is impaired due to certain hormone receptors being activated. They don’t know exactly why, but this receptor activation causes the tastebuds to lose the sensations of sweet and salty. The inability to pick up on these tastes might be a contributing factor to stress eating and not being able to eat while stressed.
The good thing is that our sense of taste has been proven to help relieve stress. Chewing a piece of sugarless gum is a very common way of relieving stress. You might even do without knowing that you’re using it in therapeutic way. Not on the taste, but the repetitive motion of chewing helps relieve stress drastically.
Another way to use taste to relieve stress is to taste things with specific flavors and savor them. Dark chocolate is a great thing to snack on and savor, concentrating on not only the taste, but the texture and scent, also. Rich and flavorful fruits such as mangos, papayas, strawberries and raspberries are all wonderful fruits to focus on and savor to help relieve your stress.
There’s a reason they refer to strong emotions as flavors.