The Neurological Effects of Stress on the Brain
Did you know that stress has physical, emotional, and neurological consequences? If you look up stress in the dictionary you’ll see, “the pressure or tension exerted on an object”. You’ll also see that it’s “a state of mental or emotional strain from adverse or very demanding circumstances.” As a neurologist, I like to think of the pressure stress exerts on the structure and function of the nervous system. But I also know that stress’s impact is beyond the physical. Left unchecked, there are negative neurological effects of stress on the brain including mental illness and neurodegenerative diseases like dementia. Stress is detrimental to neuroplasticity and can lead to disorders that I frequently see become exacerbated in patients.
Stress is a Natural Response
Stress is a normal response that happens to the body when you’re faced with unfamiliar or challenging circumstances. You’re perfectly built to deal with short-term stress. The human body has adapted to take advantage of it. The problem with stress is that the kind of stressors humans deal with has evolved over the last 200,000 years. Not only has the nature of stressors changed, but so has the frequency and duration of the body’s stress response.
Stress for early humans was escaping a large predator or fighting off an animal for food. Once the threat was gone their bodies returned to a normal resting state, returning to calm and homeostasis. Today, the stress you deal with includes bills, jobs, school, family, friends, poor health, social injustices, potential war, politics, and financial instability. It’s all around you, 24 hours and 7 days a week. The chronic stress response is harmful to your health.
Chronic Stress Increases Disease and Death
Chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline. are continuously released when you’re living a stressful life. The constant release impairs your ability to make new memories. Additionally, chronic stress weakens your immune systems and can cause weight gain as well as high blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar.
The reason so many of the body’s internal systems are affected by stress is that the stress response that occurs in the brain gets communicated to the rest of the body. The vagus nerve is responsible for passing on information, connecting the brain to the rest of the body. Your vagus nerve runs from your brain, down your face, through your chest, and into your abdomen. Along the way, it influences every organ system. So when you’re stressed or facing danger, that information travels instantly from the brain to the rest of the body.
To paraphrase Hans Selye, the first scientist to identify stress as a cause of illness, “It’s not the stress that kills you, it’s your reaction to it.”
Stress Impacts Neuroplasticity
Stress also has an impact on neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to make new neurons and connections. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to heal after injury through learning and adapting. Chronic stress impairs neuroplasticity. When you’re under stress, your brain releases cortisol, the stress hormone. One of the roles of cortisol in your brain is to focus your attention on the stressor.
Consider a lion walking into the room that you’re in. You know lions are a threat, and that awareness causes the lion to indirectly exert pressure on you. Your brain will focus on everything about that lion (size, claws, videos you’ve seen of it biting into a zebra) in order to enhance your survival. Nothing else in that moment matters; not the color of the drapes, nor the reason you were in that room. The higher levels of cortisol will selectively focus your attention on the lion while simultaneously injuring parts of your brain.
Increased levels of cortisol damage the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for short-term memory. Increased cortisol and damage to the hippocampus, due to the neurological effects of stress on the brain leads to impairments in learning and memory. In fact, I’m often called to evaluate people who may be experiencing brain fog. Usually, their biggest risk factor for memory impairment is chronic stress. The treatment for chronic stress and memory loss is hardly ever a pill. Instead, I always tell patients to adopt healthy lifestyle choices that minimize stress.
The Neurological Effects of Stress
Aside from memory disturbances, stress is well known to cause or exacerbate other neurological disorders. Stress comes in a lot of different forms and has a different meaning for everyone. But, surprisingly, one common trigger of seizures in people with a history of epilepsy is stress.
Epilepsy refers to the disorder in which people have concurrent seizures. A seizure is a change in consciousness or sensation, and/or the loss of motor control that occurs because of abnormal electrical activity in the brain. There isn’t a single common way in which stress triggers seizures. Everyone’s body and responses are different since seizures are multifactorial. However, the impact of stress on seizures likely has to do with the sleep deprivation that occurs as a result of stress, as well as the impact of stress on hormones in the brain. Whatever the mechanism is, it can create a vicious cycle with stress-causing seizures, and the increased seizure frequency causing more stress.
Studies show that about 12% of the U.S. population suffers from migraines. Migraines are different from headaches in that they tend to be more severe and produce more symptoms than a typical headache. While neuroscience is only now starting to understand the underlying cause of migraines, it’s long been known that stress is a common trigger. Four out of 5 people with migraines say that their symptoms are brought on by stress.
11 Natural Ways to Decrease the Neurological Effects of Stress on the Brain
The neurological effects of stress on the brain can be devastating. Stress can impair neuroplasticity as well as cause or exacerbate diseases throughout the entire body and especially in the brain. If you’re constantly stressed, feel tense, or find yourself having restless nights, stress may be a factor.
Here are 11 ways you can reverse the negative impact of stress on your health:
Recognize the stressors in your life
Re-evaluate the life you live
Commit to making the necessary changes
Exercise regularly
Eat healthily
Abstain from unhealthy habits
Get 6-8 hours of sleep per night
Surround yourself with people who have healthy lifestyles
Live in the present moment
Don’t be too hard on yourself
Enjoy life!
These are some of the things I discuss in my online course, Take Charge of Your Brain in 30 Days. In order to mitigate the neurological effects of stress on the brain, you have to be able to control your life. That starts by taking charge of that 3 lb mass sitting inside your skull, your brain. Once you start doing that, your physical, emotional, and neurological well-being will be better for it.