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Can People Really Get Hysterical Strength? · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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  Speaker 1: from how stuff works dot Com? Hi, and welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here how
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  Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com with me today is fellow staff
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  Speaker 1: writer an extraordinary guy, Charles Bryant. How are you, Chuck.
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  Speaker 1: I'm great, I'm extraordinary. Thanks for having me, Chuck. I
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  Speaker 1: am so jazz. I've got like all this adrenaline pumping
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  Speaker 1: through right now. I feel like I lived a car.
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  Speaker 1: I could throw this table across the room and you
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  Speaker 1: might Yeah, have you heard of these stories about people
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  Speaker 1: like picking cars up of all other people? Yeah? I have.
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  Speaker 1: It's you know, you might think it's an urban legend.
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  Speaker 1: You know, you hear these stories about people just chunking
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  Speaker 1: a buick off of their son when they're trapped underneath it.
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  Speaker 1: But it's actually true. There's plenty of documented cases. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: When you were researching this, you found a bunch of
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  Speaker 1: good ones. My favorite was the Granny and Texas. This
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  Speaker 1: is my favorite to actually. Yeah. Murray Peyton, who her
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  Speaker 1: nickname is Boots. We call her Bootsy around the office,
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  Speaker 1: right and I think everyone calls her boot lovingly. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: we love Bootsy. So Bootsy was cutting her grass in
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  Speaker 1: Texas one day on a riding more. Um, I don't
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  Speaker 1: know if she fell off or what, but somehow the
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  Speaker 1: Lawmar got away from her and it kind of kept
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  Speaker 1: on going, and her little granddaughter, Evie, thought it might
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  Speaker 1: be a good idea to stop the riding more with
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  Speaker 1: I guess superpower. She jumped in front of it, all
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  Speaker 1: a super girl. It was the impression I have, and um,
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  Speaker 1: I imagined. Poor Evie suffered quite a start when she
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  Speaker 1: found that her superpowers had failed her and she was
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  Speaker 1: suddenly pinned beneath a running rider motor right. She suffered
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  Speaker 1: more than that, Josh. She lost four of her little
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  Speaker 1: toes as a result, and she probably would have lost
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  Speaker 1: a lot more if it hadn't have been for super
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  Speaker 1: Granny coming in there. Yeah, yeah, Marie. Yeah, So Bootsy
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  Speaker 1: flies in there, well not literally, but she she runs
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  Speaker 1: in there and she picks up this Lawmar and throws
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  Speaker 1: it off of her granddaughter, you know, saving her life.
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  Speaker 1: Threw it off of her like it was a piece
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  Speaker 1: of cardboard, like a piece of cardboard or maybe something
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  Speaker 1: even lighter. And actually after the I imagine after the
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  Speaker 1: tremblings have decided and eve these injuries have been attended to. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: Marie went back over kind of curious and tried to
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  Speaker 1: pick up the lawnmoard again, couldn't budget. She couldn't even
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  Speaker 1: pined over. No, I'm sure. And what what we're talking
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  Speaker 1: about here and what boots he experienced is something called
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  Speaker 1: hysterical strength, and it's not actually recognized by the medical community.
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  Speaker 1: Did you know that? Yeah? I did, because you know,
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  Speaker 1: there's no way you can really follow up and do
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  Speaker 1: a study on something like this, right, and and and
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  Speaker 1: for something to be experimented on, it has to be
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  Speaker 1: you know, it has to be able to be replicated.
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  Speaker 1: And you you can't just throw a kid beneath the
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  Speaker 1: car in a lab and see what the parents do.
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  Speaker 1: You could? You could, It's unethical and you'd lose your
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  Speaker 1: funding very quickly. Yeah, but so you know, medical science
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  Speaker 1: hasn't taken many steps to explain it. But these cases
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  Speaker 1: are widely documented. There's lots of witnesses that kind of thing,
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  Speaker 1: and it seems to be an extension of the fight
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  Speaker 1: or flight response. You know much about this? Yeah? I do? Okay, Well,
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  Speaker 1: I'll tell everybody else. Then you just sit there quietly.
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  Speaker 1: So basically, let's say you're walking down the street and
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  Speaker 1: you're eating a hot dog and you come upon a
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  Speaker 1: lion and he is loose and he's hungry. That happens
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  Speaker 1: all the time, all right, Well, that this hot dog
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  Speaker 1: is being digested until your fight or flight response kicks in,
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  Speaker 1: which is from the sympathetic system. Uh, it takes over
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  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, adrenalinees released. That hot dog is
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  Speaker 1: no longer being digested. Instead, all the energy on stuff
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  Speaker 1: that's that's peripheral, all of a sudden to this danger
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  Speaker 1: is transferred over to things like increasing your heart rate,
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  Speaker 1: your respiration, your pupils dilate so you can take in
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  Speaker 1: more visual information, that kind of thing. And basically you
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  Speaker 1: go from the dull stare of the dairy cow to
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  Speaker 1: the eye of the tiger, and seconds flat, you're ready
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  Speaker 1: to go. The way this connects to hysterical strength, you know,
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  Speaker 1: like lifting a car is in this fight or flight response,
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  Speaker 1: your muscles contract, They shorten and tighten um so that
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  Speaker 1: you can run faster, throw a harder punch, you know
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  Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Um and your skeletal muscles actually
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  Speaker 1: contract by receiving electrical impulses from your brain. Yeah, exactly.
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  Speaker 1: They you know, have you ever been electrocuted twice? Well,
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  Speaker 1: if you if you get a sudden surge of electricity,
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  Speaker 1: a lot of times you'll be shot across the room
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  Speaker 1: or across the street or you know, who knows where
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  Speaker 1: you could land. Uh. And a lot of people think
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  Speaker 1: this is probably just like a blast from the electrical box,
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  Speaker 1: but that's not the case. It's actually your own muscles
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  Speaker 1: doing all the work. You just get such a surge
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  Speaker 1: of electrical impulse that you tap into this energy and
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  Speaker 1: and your muscles you didn't know you had. Yeah, you're
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  Speaker 1: you're actually throwing yourself, which which illustrates this kind of
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  Speaker 1: untapped reserve of of muscular strength. Well yeah, and it
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  Speaker 1: makes you kind of wonder why, you know, you don't
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  Speaker 1: walk around like that all the time and just be
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  Speaker 1: you know, a race of you know, superheroes, right or
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  Speaker 1: people ready to beat up a line at any given moment.
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  Speaker 1: Right right, Well, I'll tell you why, Chuck. The short
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  Speaker 1: answer is that it would kill us, uh in fairly
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  Speaker 1: short order. The whole goal to our body is homeostasis,
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  Speaker 1: which is like this balance between you know the eye
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  Speaker 1: of the tiger and the dulstair of the dairy cow.
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  Speaker 1: That kind of thing. Um and uh. If we don't
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  Speaker 1: achieve homeostasis, if we're in the state of hyper arousal,
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  Speaker 1: we get worn down, our hearts, wear down, more susceptible
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  Speaker 1: the illness. That kind of thing. Well, and you can
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  Speaker 1: feel that, you can and you can see it actually too.
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  Speaker 1: You and I both know from being overworked you you
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  Speaker 1: get worn down and you'll eventually die because you're in
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  Speaker 1: a state of stress well exactly, Josh, Like you know,
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  Speaker 1: like a stress induced or a work related heart attack exactly.
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  Speaker 1: And you can avoid a stress related heart attack or
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  Speaker 1: work related heart attack by taking some time out of
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  Speaker 1: your day and reading how can adrenaline help you lift
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  Speaker 1: a thirty pound car? On how stuff works dot com
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