For years, we have talked about how stress makes us sick, and indeed, stress can certainly affect our health.  And, if something makes us sick, we avoid it. In times of acute stress, our stress reaction can save our life.  Stress hormones increase our heart rate and blood pressure; our neural processing switches to self-preservation and we are ready to fight or flight.  So, our reaction time is better, our focus is on how to stay safe.  If we are driving and someone runs a stop sign that we are about to go through, we automatically break and/or swerve.  If we are hiking and run across a rattle snake, we halt and figure out how to get around it.