Stress Makes Your Brain More Susceptible to Stress

Stress changes our brains.

Your brain, like your muscles, has limited resources, meaning when one part of your brain is active, other regions are not. While you are active, working muscles get increased blood flow while it is diverted from other areas. That is one of the reasons why it is so hard to eat while exercising. Your stomach and gastrointestinal tract have reduced blood flow and ability to function. When your brain is active blood flow is also diverted to critical areas.

This causes changes to your brain when you are under stress. Your memory and higher functions get less blood flow while your amygdala runs the show.

What does this mean?

Dr. Kerry Ressler, chief scientific officer at McLean Hospital and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School says,

“The basic idea is that the brain is shunting its resources because it’s in survival mode, not memory mode. This is why you might be more forgetful when you are under stress or may even experience memory lapses during traumatic events.”

Dr. Kerry Ressler

Constantly being under stress changes your brain to use the amygdala, the area which governs survival and leaves the areas that store memory and perform higher-order tasks unable to do their jobs and competing for resources.

Short and Long Term Consequences

Stress will not only affect memory and many other brain functions, including mood and anxiety. The short-term consequences are that the amygdala, which is responsible for emotional processing sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is a command center telling the rest of the body through the nervous system to be alert. Setting up the flight or fight response. A protective response if you are in immediate physical danger.

However, most of us can not run away from our daily stressors.

Short-term stress is not the only problem, but the increase in cortisol in our brains can have long-term consequences. Chronic stress increases the production of cortisol and this changes our brain’s ability to function. Stress kills off brain cells, reduces the communication between nerve cells and shrinks our pre-frontal cortex, the area responsible for memory and learning.

It is a spiral of changes. As our prefrontal cortex shrinks due to chronic stress our amygdala increases in size. Amplifying the effects of stress.

The vicious cycle predisposes our brain to react to stress.

What can you do?

While stress can change your brain the good news is that our brains are capable of rewiring. Neuroplasticity refers to our brain’s ability to form new pathways, reducing the stress response. Interventions in the stress loop can be effective at any age and even after long periods of prolonged stress.

First, understand your stressors. While we can’t change all of them we may be able to reduce the impact by being aware of what increases our stress and taking steps to limit the fight or flight response.

Second, exercise regularly. Exercise is a great way to reduce the physical effects of stress and help us feel better. Exercise improves blood flow in our pre-frontal cortex and our hippocampus, the area critical for learning and memory. Studies have shown that exercise reverses age-related shrinkage in our hippocampus.

Exercise also has an anti-depressant effect on the brain. It reduces the brain’s response to physical and emotional stress.

Third, find your purpose. People who have a strong sense of purpose have greater neuroplasticity. Having greater neuroplasticity means being able to learn new things, an important aspect in changing our response to stress.

Changing your mind about stress really does change the health of your brain,

Shayla