What does it mean to say that the sympathetic nervous system is organized for diffuse activity?

Question

"Sympathetic activities generally serve to mobilize the energy stores of the body, to increase the blood flow through certain regions (e.g., the heart) at the expense of other areas (e.g., the abdominal viscerae), and to exhibit the outward signs of alarm and excitement.

Because the sympathetically innervated effectors generally have a wide distribution, even when the sympathetic supply to only one type of effector (e.g., the vasomotor fibers to the cutaneous blood vessels) is stimulated, the bodily response is diffuse."

1-By 'mobilize the energy stores' they mean metabolize or use up ?

2-'The bodily response is diffuse' - does that mean several parts of the body participate in the response but with no major effect individually ?

Answer 1

"Mobilize" in this context means to:

to release (something stored in the organism) for bodily use

Merriam-Webster

"Diffuse" means "spread out": it doesn't say anything about whether the effect is "major" or "minor" and I don't think it's useful to think in those terms. Instead you should just appreciate that there is no specific target affected by sympathetic activation, rather it is a whole body response: almost every organ system is involved.

Sympathetic nervous system activation occurs when an organism needs to be ready to act immediately (such as in a 'flight or fight' response), which includes more metabolism in the muscles and increased sensory sensitivity. It also includes compensating by reducing metabolism in the gut: even though digestion is a source of energy, it is slow rather than immediate and costs a lot of energy in the short term through the processes of digestion.