Stress Response

The 7 Habits of Highly Stress-Resilient Minds

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Are you suf­fer­ing from chron­ic stress? Many of us are—whether we’re stressed out by our jobs, com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships, care­giv­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties, or the gen­er­al state of the world.

That’s where Elis­sa Epel’s new book, The Stress Pre­scrip­tion, comes in. A health psy­chol­o­gist and direc­tor of the Aging, Metab­o­lism, and Emo­tions Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co, Epel explains how stress affects our bod­ies and minds—including our health, hap­pi­ness, and longevity—and how to man­age it in the best way possible.

Too many of us are in a con­stant state of alert­ness, she argues, which makes us ill-pre­pared to nav­i­gate the every­day stres­sors and big­ger upsets that occur when liv­ing a full life. We may think we’re relaxed, but we’re actu­al­ly main­tain­ing a low-lev­el vig­i­lance that’s hard on our bod­ies. Con­stant phys­i­o­log­i­cal strain can short­en our telom­eres (the caps at the ends of our DNA that pro­tect it from aging)—a process she wrote about in her best­selling book, The Telom­ere Effect.

Epel empha­sizes that not all stress is inher­ent­ly bad—and that we shouldn’t aim for a stress-free life. We need our phys­i­o­log­i­cal stress response to sur­vive, as it can come in handy when we’re gear­ing up to per­form or fac­ing an actu­al life-or-death threat. [Read more…] about The 7 Habits of High­ly Stress-Resilient Minds

Q&A with Dr. Wendy Suzuki on the parasympathetic nervous system and harnessing anxiety for good

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Anx­i­ety can feel like a heavy weight that we didn’t ask to car­ry. Who wouldn’t love to get rid of it?

But neu­ro­sci­en­tist Wendy Suzu­ki wants to chal­lenge the way we look at our anx­i­ety. In fact, her new book is called Good Anx­i­ety: Har­ness­ing the Pow­er of the Most Mis­un­der­stood Emo­tion.

If you’re skep­ti­cal, so was I. But Suzuki’s point is that anx­i­ety is a nat­ur­al human emo­tion, one that evolved to serve a pur­pose. We feel anx­ious when there is some kind of dan­ger; it primes our body to fight or flee from that dan­ger, in hopes that we’ll end up bet­ter off (i.e., alive). In the same way, our mod­ern anx­i­eties can be a warn­ing sig­nal for things that are wrong: not enough rest, too much mul­ti­task­ing, iso­la­tion from oth­ers. Our anx­ious ener­gy alerts us to change our lives for the bet­ter, she argues. [Read more…] about Q&A with Dr. Wendy Suzu­ki on the parasym­pa­thet­ic ner­vous sys­tem and har­ness­ing anx­i­ety for good

Study: A few slow-paced breaths are enough to significantly reduce physiological stress

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It’s one of the first things par­ents and teach­ers tell a child who gets upset: “Take a deep breath.” But research into the effect of deep breath­ing on the body’s stress response has over­whelm­ing­ly ignored young chil­dren – and stud­ies done with adults typ­i­cal­ly take place in a uni­ver­si­ty lab, mak­ing them even less applic­a­ble to children’s actu­al lives.

A new study by Stan­ford researchers is the first to show that tak­ing just a few slow, deep breaths sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces young children’s phys­i­o­log­i­cal arousal. By mea­sur­ing the effects in nat­u­ral­is­tic set­tings such as day camps and play­grounds, the study is also ground­break­ing for its design, which more close­ly reflects a child’s expe­ri­ence than a study in a lab would. [Read more…] about Study: A few slow-paced breaths are enough to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce phys­i­o­log­i­cal stress

Exploring the human brain and how it responds to stress (1/3)

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Wor­ry is like a rock­ing chair. It gives you some­thing to do, but it gets you nowhere.
— Erma Bombeck

The brain is the con­trol cen­ter for all of our thoughts, actions, atti­tudes, and emo­tions. It’s the pilot­house on the river­boat of our lives. It’s Mis­sion Con­trol for all of our flights into space or time. It’s the air traf­fic con­troller that helps us nav­i­gate and reroute our paths based on incom­ing and out­go­ing infor­ma­tion and how we’re feel­ing about it at the time. It’s the John Williams of our per­son­al sym­pho­ny. It’s the Moth­er Ship to our Starfleet; it’s … (Uh, sor­ry, I got car­ried away there, but I think you get my point!)

As I was work­ing on the drafts of my lat­est book book, my own brain was very active, to say the least. [Read more…] about Explor­ing the human brain and how it responds to stress (1/3)

Three evidence-based ways to develop a resilient mind

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Life throws chaos at us on a reg­u­lar basis—whether it’s our finances, our rela­tion­ships, or our health. In the work world, around 50 per­cent of peo­ple are burned out in indus­tries like health care, bank­ing, and non­prof­its, and employ­ers spend $300 bil­lion per year on work­place-relat­ed stress.

In response, we just keep on push­ing through, sur­viv­ing on adren­a­line. We over­sched­ule our­selves; we drink anoth­er cof­fee; we respond to one more email. If we stay amped up all the time, we think, we’ll even­tu­al­ly be able to get things done.

But all that does is burn us out, drain our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and lead to exhaustion.

There’s anoth­er way—a calmer way. Cul­ti­vat­ing a more rest­ful, relaxed state of mind doesn’t mean we’ll drown under all our respon­si­bil­i­ties. Instead, research sug­gests it will bring us greater atten­tion, ener­gy, and cre­ativ­i­ty to tack­le them. And sci­ence also points to sim­ple ways we can tap into that calm state of mind to [Read more…] about Three evi­dence-based ways to devel­op a resilient mind

News you can use: To improve memory, exercise brain and body at the same time

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Time for Sharp­Brains’ eNewslet­ter  track­ing the lat­est think­ing, research and tools for brain health.

This month we fea­ture five fas­ci­nat­ing inter­views at the fron­tier of applied neu­ro­science and a recent study sug­gest­ing that “Per­form­ing mem­o­ry train­ing exer­cis­es at the same time as ped­al­ing a sta­tion­ary bike led to bet­ter gains in mem­o­ry than doing the train­ing exer­cis­es after work­ing up a sweat…”

Enjoy the read!

New thinking:

New research:

New tools:

 

Final­ly, you may want to learn about cog­ni­tion and men­tal self-rota­tion with these quick brain teasers.

Have a great month of March,

The Sharp­Brains Team