Chronic Stress: 10 Ways It’s Silently Killing Your Brain Health

Brain Health Expert: Patricia Faust

There is so much written about chronic stress that it seems impossible to learn more. We know that it is bad for our health. When I speak about the Healthy Brain for Life Program, I always ask the audience if they are free from stress.

The stress module would not be of any interest to them if that were the case. I get a few snickers and notice that everyone is paying close attention to what I say. Chronic stress is epidemic, and it is killing us. We know that and strive to become healthier. For some people that can be like asking a Zebra to change its stripes. I decided to write the truth and consequences of suffering from chronic stress and then give some doable ideas on how to move into peace of mind.

10 Ways That Chronic Stress Affects Your Brain:

Cortisol is the stress hormone that does all the damage to our brain and body. Physical health problems that are a result of chronic stress include: weight-gain, osteoporosis, digestive problems, hormone imbalances, cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. How many of us in our fifties, sixties or seventies acknowledge that we have some of these conditions and there is a likelihood they may have been a result of a stressful life.

There are specific ways that stress affects your brain. Stress symptoms like memory loss, brain fog, anxiety and worry complicate our fears about developing dementia. When stress is chronic, it changes our brain’s function and even its structure down to the level of our DNA.

Let’s get through the damage stress causes our brain so that we can move to the joy of peace of mind.

“Cortisol is the stress hormone that does all the damage to our brain and body.”

1. Stress Creates Free Radicals That Kill Brain Cells:

• Cortisol creates a surplus of Glutamate which then creates free radicals.
• Free radicals are unattached oxygen molecules that attack brain cells.
• If stress causes you to lose sleep, eat junk food, drink too much alcohol or smoke cigarettes to relax you are contributing to your free radical load.

2. Chronic Stress Makes You Forgetful And Emotional:

• Memory problems may be one of the first signs of stress that you will notice – lost keys, forgotten appointments cause more stress.
• Stress makes you more emotional – electrical signals in the brain associated with factual memories weaken while the area associated with emotions strengthen.

3. Stress Halts The Production Of New Brain Cells:

• You lose brain cells everyday – but you can also create new cells everyday.
• BDNF – Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor – is a protein that is integral in keeping existing brain cells healthy and stimulating new cell growth.
• BDNF can offset the negative impact of stress on the brain.
• But cortisol halts the production of BDNF.
• Lower levels of BDNF are associated with brain-related conditions including depression, OCD, schizophrenia, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

4. Stress Depletes Critical Brain Chemicals Causing Depression:

• Your brain cells communicate via chemicals called neurotransmitters.
• Chronic stress reduces levels of the neurotransmitters – serotonin and dopamine.
• 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 are more prone to alcoholism, ADHD and impulse control disorders.
• Dopamine is the ‘motivation molecule’:
  • Too little dopamine can leave you unfocused, unmotivated, lethargic and depressed.
  • People low in dopamine use caffeine, sugar, alcohol, and illicit drugs to temporarily boost their dopamine levels.
• Serotonin depression is accompanied by anxiety and irritability.
• Dopamine-based depression expresses itself as lethargy and lack of enjoyment in life.

“Dopamine is the ‘motivation molecule'”

5. Stress Puts You At A Greater Risk For Mental Illnesses Of All Kinds:

• Recent research has discovered physical differences in the brains of people with stress disorders.
• Their ratio of the brain’s white matter to gray matter is higher.
• Stress predisposes you to develop a variety of mental illnesses including anxiety and panic disorders, depression, PTSD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, drug addiction and alcoholism.

6. Stress Makes You Stupid:

• Stress impairs your memory and makes you bad at making decisions.
• This negatively affects decision-making, working memory, and control of compulsive behavior.

7. 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 act as your brain’s gatekeeper.
• Stress makes the blood-brain barrier more permeable – making it leaky.
• That lets things into your brain that you don’t want there.
• Having a leaky blood-brain barrier is associated with brain cancer, brain infections and multiple sclerosis.

8. Chronic Stress Increases Your Risk Of Dementia And Alzheimer’s:

• One of the most worrying effects of stress on the brain is that it increases your risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s.
• It has been found that stress occurring in midlife, increases the risk of dementia.
• Anxiety, jealousy, and moodiness in middle age double your risk for developing dementia.

9. Stress Causes Brain Cells To Commit Suicide:

• Stress leads to premature aging on a cellular level, causing cells in both your body and your brain to commit suicide prematurely
• To understand this, we must look at a part of your chromosomes called telomeres
• Telomeres are protective end caps on our chromosomes similar to the plastic tips on shoelaces
• Every time a cell divides, the telomeres get a little shorter
• When they reach critically shortened length, they tell the cell to stop dividing, acting as a built-in suicide switch
• Subsequently the cell dies
• Shortened telomeres lead to atrophy of brain cells and longer telomere length leads to the production of new brain cells

10. Chronic Stress Contributes To Brain Inflammation:

• The brain has its own immune system.
• Special immune cells called microglia protect the brain, spinal cord from infections and toxins.
• These cells don’t have an on and off switch – once activated it creates inflammation until it dies.
• Chronic stress increases the risk of activating your microglia – producing brain inflammation.

With all of the catastrophic damage that chronic stress does to your brain is there any way that you can find your way back to peace of mind? Let’s take a look at what you need to do to recover from chronic stress and find peace of mind in the next blog.

References:

12 Effects of Chronic Stress on Your Brain, Deane Alban (November 25, 2018): https://bebrainfit.com/effects-chronic-stress-brain/

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