It can wait. Assimilation and elimination are held in abeyance. Then when the immediate danger has passed, the body swings back to its normal function and these processes are resumed. I repeat, this is a perfectly normal and marvellous process. As our civilization has developed and expanded it has eliminated many of the more immediate dangers which have confronted man.
Today there are subtle fears of atomic war and the annihilation of mankind.
Whatever the fear, the body continues to react to the emotional stimulus in the only way it knows. The body has no reasoning intelligence. It has only instinctive intelligence and it continues to respond to the buried sense of fear just as it would to the active, immediate, physical danger. We may be consciously unaware of any such fear, but the body always aware, and continues to keep the blood-pressure raised beyond the normal needs of the body. When the blood pressure is increased until it is pounding against the elastic walls of the arteries, the body finds it must protect itself.