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Reader Question – Thiago Bio Bemfica Mattos,
Embu das Artes, SP
Because when faced with a situation of embarrassment, stress or even fear, our body releases the hormone adrenaline, which increases blood flow and dilates the blood vessels of the face, causing redness. The person responsible for this, explains Dr. Ricardo Arita, a neurophysiologist at Unifesp, is the sympathetic nervous system, which reacts involuntarily to these situations. In addition to vasodilation, the effects of adrenaline – which do not exceed three minutes – are increased heart rate, increased breathing, pupil dilation and accelerated production of sweat with a more intense odor. There is still no conclusive explanation for the fact that only the face blushes, but the currently most accepted hypothesis is that, in addition to high vascularity, the facial region has thinner skin than the rest of the body. In nature, man is the only species that suffers from this effect, defined by the British biologist Charles Darwin as “the most peculiar and human of all expressions”.
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