This Is Your Body On Pandemic 'Whiplash'
Huff PostLuis Alvarez via Getty Images The year 2021 has been like a roller coaster. Here’s how this kind of whiplash affects our health, and how to cope with it: The toll whiplash takes on our bodies Throughout the pandemic, a lot of people have coped by hoping that specific, reachable goals — like the authorization of vaccines, or the reopening of schools and businesses — would signal the end of the pandemic. “But what’s happened is every time we’ve gotten there, it’s like ‘Oh, wait, just kidding, a little bit longer, a little bit longer,’” said Thea Gallagher, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at NYU Langone Health. “But with chronic, ongoing trauma, cortisol levels cannot keep up with the demand — they do not recover and therefore become chronically low,” Anderson said. “When that happens over and over, people become exhausted and worn out and less able to mount an appropriate response when there’s a real, actual threat to their safety or well-being,” said Lucy McBride, an internal medicine physician in Washington, D.C.
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