Your heart starts racing, your mouth goes dry and sweat beads on your forehead. We’ve all been there, caught in a moment of stress. When you encounter a situation that threatens your safety, your brain must make a critical decision – how to react to the danger at hand.
This is a phenomenon my colleagues and I explore in the programme Michael Mosley: Wonders of the Human Body on Channel 5, the late doctor and presenter’s final TV series. He died in June this year.
A team of us from Bangor University took Michael out of his normal comfort zone to complete an activity with a very high potential risk. We then monitored his body to measure his stress response. He was no stranger to putting his body to the test to help viewers at home understand their own bodies.
