Brain Yoga: Stress — Killing You Softly

It’s clear that our soci­ety has changed faster than our genes. Instead of being faced with phys­i­cal, imme­di­ate­ly life-threat­en­ing crises that demand instant action, these days we deal with events and ill­ness­es that gnaw away at us slow­ly with­out any stress release.

Dr. Robert Sapol­sky, in an inter­view about his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, points out that humans unique­ly “can get stressed sim­ply with thought, turn­ing on the same stress response as does the zebra.” But, the zebra releas­es the stress hor­mones through life-pre­serv­ing action, while we usu­al­ly just keep mud­dling along, get­ting more anx­ious by the moment.

Pro­longed expo­sure to the adren­al steroid hor­mones, like cor­ti­sol, released dur­ing stress can dam­age the brain and block the for­ma­tion of new neu­rons in the hip­pocam­pus, which is the key play­er in encod­ing new mem­o­ries in your brain. Recent stud­ies have shown these neu­rons can be regen­er­at­ed with learn­ing and envi­ron­men­tal stim­u­la­tion, but while short-term stress may improve atten­tion and mem­o­ry, chron­ic stress leads indi­rect­ly to cell death and ham­pers our abil­i­ty to make changes and be cre­ative enough to even think of pos­si­ble changes to reduce the stress.

What are the best defens­es against chron­ic stress?

1. Exer­cise strength­ens the body and can reduce the expe­ri­ence of stress, depres­sion, and anx­i­ety. Exer­cise pro­motes arousal and relax­ation and improves qual­i­ty of sleep.

2. Relax­ation through med­i­ta­tion, biofeed­back, yoga, or oth­er tech­niques to low­er blood pres­sure, slow res­pi­ra­tion, slow metab­o­lism, and release mus­cle tension.

3. Empow­er­ment because atti­tudes of per­son­al con­fi­dence and con­trol of your envi­ron­ment, even if illu­so­ry, resolve the stress response.

4. Social net­work of friends, fam­i­ly, and even pets help fos­ter trust, sup­port, and relaxation.

So hey, go ahead, call your mom. It may save your life!

Fur­ther resources:
“Brain Fit­ness Arti­cles, Now with Some Humor”
“Robert Sapol­sky on Stress”
“Stress Man­age­ment Tips from the Serengeti”
“Pre­na­tal stress sup­press­es cell pro­lif­er­a­tion in the ear­ly devel­op­ing brain”

Let us know what you think!