 “Whatever any man does he first must do in his mind, whose machinery is the brain. The mind can do only what the brain is equipped to do, and so man must find out what kind of brain he has before he can understand his own behavior.” - Gay Gaer Luce & Julius Segal It’s common knowledge that you must always protect your head from physical danger. You wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, skating, or playing sports. However, there are other dangers out there that you must also protect your brain against. Studies have shown that the brain is an awesome learning device, but it can be influenced as much by negative perceptions as by positive ones. These negative influences can actually affect how the brain functions. If you limit your intellectual growth, that is, if you continuously tell yourself that you’re not smart enough, your brain can never operate at peak efficiency. Self-image is how you feel about yourself and has a direct impact on your brain’s efficiency, at least where intellectual activities are concerned. So, what can you do to save your brain? You can’t change your genes, but you can change your environment and your lifestyle. Stress and Your Brain At the first signs of stress, the adrenaline kicks in, setting off a burst of activity in your nervous system. This is turn, speeds up your heart and changes the size of the blood vessels. Besides getting you ready for fight or flight, it also helps you to remember those frightening events of your life. Therefore, this adrenaline surge also helps to plant emotional memories of the event in your life. After the surge of adrenaline, comes the second stage of the stress response. The adrenal cortex begins to pump out cortisol, hydrocortisone and corticosterone. These are called glucocorticoids or GCs. These GCs are helpful in dealing with emergencies. Besides boosting glucose production and constricting blood vessels, they also go straight up to the brain to help regulate stress signaling. It tells your brain whether to calm down or boost the stress level, depending on what’s best for you at the moment. These GCs can exert pressure on the temporal lobe to help you remember those emotional events. Some stress is emergency induced and some is chronic. Chronic stress can be very dangerous to your brain, since it constantly sends GCs from the adrenal glands straight to the brain. That’s why stressed out brains are at risk for damage. The glucocorticoids go straight to the brain, to the memory system, most especially the hippocampus. It tells your memories that the event has survival value to you and you need to remember it. Unfortunately, the GCs are not always beneficial. These hormones are very powerful and sometimes stress can raise the levels of these hormones beyond what the brain’s neurons can handle. This can result in damage to the parts of the brain that relate to memory. Long periods of severe, prolonged stress can actually lead to the death of neurons. If you feel you’re at the mercy of your circumstances, it can actually intensify the danger to your brain. Different people react differently to stress. Some who go through traumatic events will go on to suffer some lasting effects, actually becoming psychologically overwhelmed. Others work through the event and come out virtually unscathed and with memories intact. Knowing whether your stress is acute or chronic is key to figuring out why some brains are more susceptible to stress related damage. Each person possesses his/her own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to handling stress and knowing what to do about it. Those who are more vulnerable to anger, anxiety, low self-esteem, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder are more likely to suffer brain damage. Keep in mind that everyone has moments of depression or “the blues” as some people call them. These normally do not last long and you shouldn’t worry about them. You will encounter these moments of sadness and grief or indulge in little “pity parties” many times in the course of your life. Major depression is something different altogether and requires serious professional assistance. This is considered one of the biggest stresses for anyone and is immensely painful and ultimately dangerous for your brain. It is possible to recover from major depression, but what does it do to the brain? Doctors report that fifty percent of the people who undergo major depression possess high cortisol levels. A high cortisol level over a long period of time can bring about some degree of brain damage. They’ve shown that the first neurons damaged in this way are in the memory center. The Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in a study, discovered that people who had once been depressed, even several years before, showed twelve to fifteen percent atrophy of their hippocampi. That means the loss of millions of memory cells. Most people who have been depressed are more likely to have recurrent episodes of depression. What else can cause our stress levels to rise to unhealthy levels? Anger, anxiety and low self-esteem can contribute to the problem. Here, we’re not talking about slight anxiety or the occasional feelings of anger towards a situation or an individual. Where the brain and its susceptibility to damage are concerned, we’re talking about severe anxiety of long duration. Someone who feels anger constantly and for years without respite, is not only a candidate for brain damage, but for a heart attack or stroke as well. As for low self-esteem, studies have proven that success and feeling good about oneself is definitely beneficial to your health. The opposite is also true, of course. Someone who has a chronically depressed personality is doing damage to his or her brains. In this day and age, we are not running from wild beasts and our lives are not necessarily in constant danger, but we experience our own type of stress nevertheless. With deadlines and pressures at work, rush hour traffic, family problems, the ever present need to handle money and bills, it’s no wonder we experience chronic stress. We are constantly feeling the adrenaline rush of our predecessors, but without the relief of fight or flight that they had. Dr. Jeff Victoroff, in his book, “Saving Your Brain,” says that the cultural evolution has outpaced the evolution of the brain. We are developing frayed nerves, quite literally. Only by relaxing and slowing down can we help to save our brains. So, what’s the best way to reduce that stress, lower the hormone levels, relax and save your brain? Aerobic exercise! That’s right-it’s so simple! We have all that nervous energy stored up, and practically leaking out our ears and what do we do? We go and sit on the couch and watch television, but that’s not enough to relieve the stress of our days. We need to throw ourselves literally into some form of physical activity, in order to relieve the pressure. Strenuous physical activity will reduce the stress, the anger, and the anxiety. The endorphins produced by this physical activity make our bodies and minds feel good; and then we feel better about ourselves, boosting our self-esteem. Emotionally happy and healthy people have brains that are happy and healthy too. How wonderful would it be if that were all we had to do to relieve stress and thereby save our brain cells? In some cases, that works beautifully well. In others, not so much. No matter how much they exercise, stress still gets to them, threatening their physical and emotional health with high blood pressure, which can lead to strokes, which in turn destroys brain cells. On the Job Stress How is your job affecting your brain? Overly demanding work can create too much stress, releasing hormones that can quite literally kill brain cells. However, work that demands no thought, thereby not sufficiently engaging the brain is just as bad. Boring, mind-numbing work may actually be just as hard on your brain as unrelieved stress. Work that doesn’t challenge your brain can cause it to actually degenerate or atrophy. Therefore, you must avoid excessively demanding work as well as insufficiently demanding work and strike a happy medium somewhere. To be happy and healthy, physically, emotionally, and mentally, you need to feel a sense of purpose and a feeling of having mastered at least a part of your job, but still have enough of a challenge to be stimulated. That will allow you to have a healthy brain. What are the hazards in your workplace? While there have always been occupational related hazards on the job, such as painters in danger of inhaling fumes from the materials they handle on a daily basis, the current era has probably produced more toxic dangers than ever before in history. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Occupational Safety and Health Association (OSHA), all have tried to make our lives safer and healthier, testing virtually everything we could be exposed to in the performance of our jobs. What keeps these organizations from being totally successful in protecting our bodies and our brains? It’s the sheer volume of compounds they have to test every year. Thousands of compounds and toxins are synthesized every year and there’s just no way to get them all tested. When it comes to your job, how hard is too hard? We’ve left the pre-industrial society with it’s “it takes a village” philosophy and unfortunately, entered the competitive “work, work, work” society, with its risk of identity loss. Back in 1979, Americans worked an average of thirty-eight and a half hours per week, as compared to the forty-two hours per week in 1999. Most don’t have a lunch “hour” anymore; it’s more like thirty minutes. Once upon a time, workers could actually go home for lunch, but now there is simply not enough time for such luxuries, especially since most people now work so far from their homes. Job stress is not necessarily the number of hours you put into the job, but the type of work you do too. An emergency room nurse has more stress than the receptionist does at a bank. The working mom may put in a forty hour week, but how about the extra fifty hours she puts in after she gets home, taking care of her children? Stress at work can mean high levels of glucocorticoids assaulting your brain. Those with special stress such as doctors and surgeons or soldiers in battle are even more at risk. However, there are other mitigating circumstances that cause stress, such as:
All these things can cause high levels of GCs to flood into the bloodstream, showing that job related stress could damage brain cells. Ask yourself these questions about your job.
If you enjoy your job, feel real satisfaction in doing it, and are made to feel you’re an invaluable member of the team, you will experience much less stress in your life, and that’s another way you can save your brain. As long as we’re discussing how work can impact your brain, let’s also add another topic that could be adding to your stress levels. While technology has enabled us to make remarkable strides in the fields of medicine and communications, it has also brought with it a new form of stress—that of Information Overload! Information can bombard you from every direction now. Just one issue of the New York Times contains more information than the average person from the 17th century encountered in an entire lifetime. Not to mention that bad news seems to dominate the information flowing towards you. Unfortunately, bad news sells better than good news. There you go—more stress coming at you. Besides the newspapers, there are thousands of magazines, television, radio, email and snail mail bombarding you every day. The good news is that the field of communication has taken giant leaps in our society too. The bad news is that everyone seems to feel the need for a cell phone, a pager, a blackberry, and a laptop computer. Why do we feel the need to be connected every minute of the day? Unless you’re a doctor, is it really necessary? Are we really just trying to impress others with our seeming productivity? At what cost? More and more people are experiencing burnout, chronic fatigue, and nervousness. All because they can never escape this information overload. How can you handle this overload and not let it control you? That’s going to mean leaving the computer at work, turning off the pager and the blackberry. Avoid the email once in a while. Take a break from technology and give yourself a much-needed vacation from the overload. Reduce the stress and learn to relax and your brain will thank you. “The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.” - Robert Frost |
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