Your Stress Response

There are three main parts of you that control your stress response your hypothalamus and
your pituitary (both in your brain), and your adrenal glands by your kidneys.

What happens in your brain?

Once your brain has decided theres a danger, it sends immediate nerve signals down your
spinal cord to your adrenal glands telling them to release the hormone adrenaline. Once
released, adrenaline increases the amount of sugar in your blood, increases your heart rate
and raises your blood pressure (and has many other actions).

Your brains remarkable hypothalamus also sends signals to your pituitary gland at the
bottom of your brain, telling it to release factors that within a few minutes have travelled
through your blood stream and stimulated your adrenal cortex to produce a stress
hormone cortisol.

Before we look at the many ways chronic stress affects your brain, we need to know a little
bit about stress hormones.
Adrenaline is the stress hormone produced on an as needed basis in moments of extreme
excitement.

It will help you think and move fast in an emergency.

In the right situation, it can save your life.
It doesnt linger, dissipating as quickly as it was created.

Cortisol, on the other hand, streams through your system all day long, and thats what
makes it so dangerous. This stress hormone has been called public enemy #1.

Excess cortisol leads to a host of health problems including weight gain,

osteoporosis, digestive problems, hormone imbalances, cancer, heart disease,
cancer, and diabetes.
Chronic stress takes a toll on adrenal glands.
It can leaving you feeling exhausted, and wired but tired.
It can produce weight gain, mood swings, poor sleep, short attention span, and
memory issues are common signs of stress due to elevated cortisol.

However, cortisol is very important in your stress response - keeping your blood sugar and
blood pressure up to help you escape from danger.
Long-term effects of stress
Your bodys stress response is perfect in the short-term, but damaging if it goes on for weeks
or years. Raised levels of cortisol for prolonged periods can damp down your immune
system and decrease the number of brain cells so impairing your memory. It can also affect
your blood pressure and the fats in your blood making it more likely you will have a heart
attack or stroke.
The Effects of Stress on Your Brain

But most of these effects of stress on your brain are behind the scenes.

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Some of these brain-related stress symptoms will be obvious to you, like forgetfulness,
anxiety, and worry.

While stress and cortisol take a toll on your body, they take an equally high toll on your
brain.

You dont notice theyre happening but you will notice the side effects eventually.
Here are 12 ways chronic stress impacts your brain health and mental well-being along with
simple steps you can take to counteract the damage.

1. Stress creates free radicals that kill brain cells.

Cortisol creates a surplus of the neurotransmitter glutamate.
Glutamate creates free radicals unattached oxygen molecules that attack brain cells
much in the same way that oxygen attacks metal, causing it to rust.
Free radicals actually punch holes in the brain cell walls, leading them to rupture and die.
Stress also indirectly contributes to other lifestyle habits that create more free radicals.
If stress causes you to lose sleep, eat junk food, drink too much alcohol, or smoke cigarettes
to relax, these are contributing to your free radical load.

2. Stress makes you forgetful and emotional.

Forgetfulness may be one of the first signs of stress youll notice. Misplaced keys and
forgotten appointments have you scrambling, further adding to your stress.
If you find all this stress is making you more emotional too, theres a physiological reason for
this.
Studies show that when youre stressed, electrical signals in the brain associated with
factual memories weaken while areas in the brain associated with emotions strengthen.

3. Stress creates a vicious cycle of fear and anxiety.

Stress builds up an area of your brain called the amygdala.
This is your brains fear centre.
Stress increases the size, activity level and number of neural connections in this part of your
brain.
This makes you more fearful, causing a vicious cycle of even more fear and stress.

4. Stress halts the production of new brain cells.

Every day you lose brain cells, but every day you have the opportunity to create new ones.
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is protein thats integral in keeping existing brain
cells healthy and stimulating new brain cell formation.
BDNF can offset the negative effects of stress on the brain.
Its been compared to fertilizer for the brain.
But cortisol halts the production of BDNF resulting in fewer new brain cells being formed.
Lowered levels of BDNF are associated with brain-related conditions including depression
and Alzheimers disease.

Chronic stress reduces levels of critical neurotransmitters, especially serotonin and

dopamine.

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Your brain cells communicate via brain chemicals called neurotransmitters.

5. Stress depletes critical brain chemicals causing depression.

Low levels of either of these neurotransmitters can leave you depressed and more prone to
addictions.
Serotonin is called the happy molecule.
It plays a large role in mood, learning, appetite control, and sleep.
Women low in serotonin are prone to depression, anxiety, and binge eating.
Men, on the other hand, are more prone to alcoholism, ADHD, and impulse control
disorders.
Dopamine is the motivation molecule.
Its in charge of your pleasure-reward system.
Too little dopamine can leave you unfocused, unmotivated, lethargic, and depressed.
People low in this brain chemical often use caffeine, sugar, alcohol, and illicit drugs to
temporarily boost their dopamine levels.
Serotonin-based depression is accompanied by anxiety and irritability, while dopaminebased depression expresses itself as lethargy and lack of enjoyment of life.

6. Stress puts you at greater risk for mental illnesses of all kinds.
The root cause of most mental illnesses is not yet understood.
Most likely the answers will be a complex variety of factors.
Recent research has discovered physical differences in the brains of people with stress
disorders.
Their ratio of the brains white matter to grey matter is higher.
Stress predisposes you to developing a variety of mental illnesses including anxiety and
panic disorders, depression, PTSD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, drug addiction and
alcoholism.

7. Stress makes you freeze.

Stress can cause your brain to seize up at the worst possible times exams, job interviews,
and public speaking come to mind.
This is actually a survival mechanism.
If youre faced with a life and death situation, instinct and training take over from rational
thought and reasoning.
This might keep you from being eaten by a tiger, but in modern life this is rarely helpful.
Stress impairs your memory and makes you bad at making decisions.
It negatively impacts every cognitive function.

8. Stress shrinks your brain.

Stress can measurably shrink your brain.

Stress also shrinks the prefrontal cortex.

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The hippocampus is critical for learning, memory and emotional regulation, as well as
shutting off the stress response after a stressful event is over.

Cortisol can kill, shrink, and stop the generation of new neurons in the hippocampus, the
part of your brain that stores memories.

This negatively affects decision making, working memory, and control of impulsive
behaviour.

9. Stress lets toxins into your brain.

Your brain is highly sensitive to toxins of every kind.
The blood-brain barrier is a group of highly specialized cells that acts as your brains
gatekeeper. This semi-permeable filter protects your brain from harmful substances while
letting needed nutrients in.
Stress makes the blood-brain barrier more permeable or leaky.
This lets things into the brain you dont want there, such as pathogens, heavy metals,
chemicals, and other toxins.
Having a leaky blood-brain barrier is associated with brain cancer, brain infections, and
multiple sclerosis.

10. Stress increases your risk of dementia and Alzheimers.

One of the most worrying effects of stress on the brain is that it increases your risk for
dementia and Alzheimers.
Being diagnosed with Alzheimers disease is the #1 health fear of American adults, even
more so than cancer.
Alzheimers is now the 6th leading cause of death.
One in three US seniors will die with Alzheimers or other forms of dementia. And its the most
expensive disease in the country.
There is no simple magic bullet to prevent Alzheimers.
Common sense advice includes eating a healthy diet low in sugar and high in brain-healthy
fats, getting physical exercise, not smoking, staying mentally active, avoiding toxic metal
exposure, and minimizing stress.
Its been found that stress, particularly stress that occurs in midlife, increases risk of
Alzheimers.
Anxiety, jealousy and moodiness in middle age doubles your risk of developing Alzheimers.
Chronic stress and elevated cortisol is known to lead to dementia in the elderly.

11. Stress causes brain cells to die off.

Stress leads to premature aging on a cellular level, causing cells in both your body and your
brain to die prematurely.
To understand how this happens, we need to take a look at a part of your chromosomes
called telomeres.
You may recall from high school biology that when a cell divides, it passes on the genetic
material to the next cell via chromosomes.
Telomeres are protective endcaps on our chromosomes similar to the plastic tips on
shoelaces.

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When they reach a critically shortened length, they tell the cell to stop dividing, acting as a
built-in death switch. Subsequently the cell dies.

Every time a cell divides, the telomeres get a little shorter.

Shortened telomeres lead to atrophy of brain cells and longer telomere length leads to the
production of new brain cells.
Telomere length may be the most important indicator of biological age and disease risk.
Some researchers believe its a better predictor of your risk for age-related diseases like
Alzheimers, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer than conventional diagnostic tools.

12. Stress destroys your happiness and peace of mind.

Stress hugely affects the way you think and feel.
It can wear you down mentally and emotionally, and sap the joy from life.
Some signs of stress that impact your mental well-being include:

excessive worry and fear

anger and frustration
impatience with self and others
mood swings, crying spells or suicidal thoughts
insomnia, nightmares, disturbing dreams
trouble concentrating and learning new information
racing thoughts, nervousness
forgetfulness, mental confusion
difficulty in making decisions
feeling overwhelmed
irritability and overreaction to petty annoyances
excessive defensiveness or suspiciousness
increased smoking, alcohol, drug use, gambling or impulse buying

Its no fun experiencing these stress symptoms. Its no picnic for those around you either.

Simple Steps to Help a Stressed Brain

So, what can be done about it?
Minimizing stress and protecting your brain against the effects of stress is easier than you
might think.
Here are four simple tips to stop stress in its tracks and overcome its harmful effects on your
brain.

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1. Stop free radical damage by eating a diet high in antioxidant-rich foods like fruit,
vegetables and dark chocolate.
2. Increase levels of brain-boosting BDNF by getting daily physical exercise. It doesnt
have to be strenuous. Walking is excellent. So are exercises with strong mind-body
orientations like yoga, tai chi, and qi gong.
3. Start a daily meditation practice. Meditation not only reduces stress, its a proven
way to keep your brain young by keeping telomeres long.
4. Monitor your thoughts for automatic negative reactions and cognitive distortions.
Stress does not come from events in your life as much as it comes from your
thoughts about these events. Meditation is the best tool for learning how to master
your thoughts.

Stress Effects on Neuronal Structure: Hippocampus, Amygdala, and Prefrontal Cortex

The hippocampus provided the gateway into much of what we know about stress and
brain structural and functional plasticity, and this initial focus has expanded to other
interconnected brain regions, such as the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Starting with
the discovery of adrenal steroid, and later, oestrogen receptors in the hippocampal
formation, and subsequent discovery of dendritic and spine synapse remodelling and
neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus, mechanistic studies have revealed both genomic and
rapid non-genomic actions of circulating steroid hormones in the brain.
Many of these actions occur epigenetically and result in ever-changing patterns of gene
expression, in which there are important sex differences that need further exploration.
Moreover, glucocorticoid and oestrogen actions occur synergistically with an increasing
number of cellular mediators that help determine the qualitative nature of the response.
The hippocampus has also been a gateway to understanding lasting epigenetic effects of
early-life experiences. These findings in animal models have resulted in translation to the
human brain and have helped change thinking about the nature of brain malfunction in
psychiatric disorders and during aging, as well as the mechanisms of the effects of early-life
adversity on the brain and the body.

Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis, Fear Generalization, and Stress

The generalization of fear is an adaptive, behavioural, and physiological response to the

likelihood of threat in the environment. In contrast, the overgeneralization of fear, a
cardinal feature of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), manifests as inappropriate,
uncontrollable expression of fear in neutral and safe environments.

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Overgeneralization of fear stems from impaired discrimination of safe from aversive

environments or discernment of unlikely threats from those that are highly probable. In
addition, the time-dependent erosion of episodic details of traumatic memories might
contribute to their generalization. Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying the
overgeneralization of fear will guide development of novel therapeutic strategies to
combat PTSD.