Your Brain On Stress
What it looks like and how to manage it
Introduction
The brain is the primary organ that manages stress and the body’s adaptations to it. There are countless inputs that contribute to stress; the brain has to sort through these and determine which are threats and which are not and coordinate the necessary behavioral and physiological responses.
The brain also demonstrates a remarkable amount of plasticity in response to stress, which is a useful and necessary physiological adaptation. However, long-term stress can overwhelm the neural circuitry and stop the brain from addressing cognitive, decision making, mood and anxiety balance functions.
What Stress Does To Your Brain
First, it must be acknowledged that there are multiple types of stress and the brain copes with them in different ways.
Good stress is the experience of taking a risk and being rewarded with a positive outcome or rising to the challenge. These things reinforce a good self-esteem and contribute to the building of a healthy brain architecture.
Tolerable stress consists of situations where bad things happen but an individual has the necessary stability and healthy brain architecture to cope with them. These situations reinforce resilience and can serve as growth experiences, similarly to good stress.
Finally, toxic stress is when bad things happen to people who do not have a support system and whose brain architecture does not have the ability to absorb the effects of bad experiences.
Stressors of any kind influence and shape your “brain architecture” over time. This term refers to mental wellness, plasticity, and resiliency of the brain in response to external events.
Many researchers cite certain common difficulties in studying the direct one-to-one relationship of stress on the brain since there are a plethora of factors that influence its function, shape, and adaptations.
However, the primary theory is that the chronically stressed brain is more likely to have maladaptive circuitry and have less features of plasticity. Persistent excitatory signaling caused by stress can result in harmful damage to the brain along with the inactivation of the adaptive insulin receptor mechanism necessary for healthy metabolic function.
This is all due to inappropriate excitation of the glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptors that are present in the hippocampus, ultimately leading to an increase in free radicals which cause damage to surrounding structures.
Another transmitter that can cause damage and impact brain health in response to stress are excitatory amino acids, the most clinically significant of which is glutamate. Acute stress has been shown to significantly increase levels of glutamate which in turn participate in dendritic remodeling.
Head trauma, ischemia, and seizures also cause increased levels of glutamate release where they can lead to permanent neuronal loss. Studies have shown that unregulated glutamate overflow is found in depressive-like behavior in animal models.
Conclusion
Ultimately, stress brings lots of physical and psychological changes as it adapts to chronic stress. Though there are different types of stress, it is important to manage it as much as possible by building strong support systems and instilling mental fortitude as much as possible.
Research across the board has shown changes occur on the pathophysiological level that reflect the amount of stress and the duration of stressful input. Understanding these changes help us realize that it is in the interest of optimal health to mitigate the amount of stress in day to day life.
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If you like this content, check out my article about how your thoughts influence yuour behavior at: https://www.theunreliablemind.com/blog/you-are-what-you-think
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