Chronic Stress

I found an article in Brain World titled, “Chronic stress and how it can harm you.  In the article, they compared psychological stress to mechanical stress as in engineering.  This engineering outlook defines stress as the amount of resistance a material offers to being reshaped and reformed.  In other words, a steel beam can handle a certain amount of stress before it collapses under the load and the structure suffers.  The authors in this article look at psychological stress in the same way, stating that we can all handle a certain threshold of stress, but at excessive levels, we breakdown.  What I liked about this particular article is that the authors offer a slightly more complete picture than what has been presented in the past.

Emotional stress is perceived in the brain, but then chemically generated by the stress hormone cortisol from the adrenal glands.  In chronic stress, the adrenals will produce higher and higher levels of cortisol that act to decrease a part of the brain’s resistance to free radicals.  This part of the brain is called the hippocampus and it is associated with converting short-term memory to long-term memory.  The free radical damage to the nerve cells of the hippocampus will negatively impact memory, learning, and creativity.  The cells actually shrink and die in this process.  In studies using rats, they found that the stressed rats became less creative and cunning predisposing the animals to doing the same thing over and over.  There’s more to this, but this damage to the hippocampus is the mechanism by where memory and our ability to learn effectively are diminished as a result of chronic stress.  As it turns out, the hippocampus is also the mechanism by which the adrenals are regulated or shut off.  Thus, as the nerve cells in this part of the brain become damaged and die, there is no regulator for the adrenals and the process spirals out of control until the adrenal glands become damaged themselves.

There is a big silver lining to this study however.  The authors researched how this process could be reversed and how the damaging effects of stress could be limited.  They found that the hippocampus could be protected through calorie reduction, fasting, and mental and physical exercise.  These healthy activities increase a hormone that acts to protect the hippocampus from free radicals associated high cortisol levels.  In past articles, I’ve made reference to our Wellness Program.  The research documented in this study is precisely why we incorporate, meditation, massage, and chiropractic along with a healthy diet and exercise into our program.  In fact, I would argue that if you’re doing any kind of weight loss program that doesn’t include physical exercise and stress reduction, you’re not going to get favorable results.  Understand that stress literally is the silent killer and the goal is not necessarily to try to eliminate all forms of stress.  Rather, promoting healthy activity such as proper diet, exercise, meditation, massage, proper sleep and chiropractic care all combined to help shut off the stress response and the associated damage to the brain is the way to go.