My brain is shrinking; is yours?

By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff

Whether you’re reading the news, writing the news, watching the news or surviving the events that make up the news, it’s currently impossible to live a stress-free life. That’s the way of the world, and though most motivational posters will either tell you to “Hang in there” or “Let it go,” we can’t recover fast enough to enjoy some calm between the crises. Bad news: If you’re like me, and stress is the baseline of your life, that just creates more things to worry about. In particular, the long-term effect stress is having on your body.

The Cleveland Clinic, a nonprofit academic medical center, breaks down stress into three overarching categories: acute, episodic acute and chronic.

Acute or short-term stress is an immediate but brief reaction to a stimulus. If you’re driving on the highway, have a near-miss with a deer and feel your heart rate spike, that’s acute stress. If those experiences happen at fairly regular intervals — perhaps caused by daily commute difficulties or deadlines at work — then it becomes episodic acute stress. However, if you pay attention to politics or science or current events, you’re probably experiencing chronic stress, which can last weeks, months or years. 

This constant, nagging worry seemingly never dissipates and can be brought on by financial difficulties, abusive relationships, or emotionally or physically demanding jobs. (Or watching the world burn every summer, seeing the government strip us of our rights, living through droughts and snowless winters in the north, etc.)

Since we’re animals that evolved alongside other predators, our sympathetic nervous systems have adapted to activate when confronted with a stressor — only now it’s taxes, not giant hyenas. The body releases hormones like epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine, cortisol, dopamine and vasopressin, which elevate your heart rate, increase respiration, sharpen your focus and otherwise shift the body into fight-or-flight mode to help avoid danger. 

While this is a great way to escape a bear in the woods, when you live with a bear, work with a bear or bears run your country (or all three), there’s no immediate escape, so you exist in a constant state of fight-or-flight.

Not only does that feel terrible, but it wears down the body. Constricting the blood vessels and forcing the heart to beat faster results in high blood pressure and damages arterial lining, leading to a buildup of cholesterol and a higher risk of heart attack or stroke. High cortisol levels prevent the production of immune cells, leading to a weaker immune system and slower healing times. Adrenaline and cortisol combined can even change the structure of the brain, weakening connections between cells, stopping the growth of new cells and impairing cognitive function. 

Under constant stress, the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex — which give us memory, the ability to learn and self-control — will actually shrink, making it harder to learn new skills, make decisions or focus. Conversely, the amygdala (the fear and emotion center) can grow, leading to anxiety, depression, severe mood changes and panic attacks that cause chest pain, shortness of breath and heart palpitations, just like a heart attack.

But wait, there’s more! All this wear and tear on the body and mind leads to even more side effects, like exhaustion, trouble sleeping, muscle tension (especially around the jaw), digestive problems, headaches, dizziness… The list goes on.

There are plenty of steps we can take to manage stress — exercising, journaling, listening to music, meditating, going to therapy — but at this point it’s all for naught. We can calm ourselves down as much as we want, but, at the end of the day, the bears still have the nuclear codes. Until we dedicate ourselves to one another and to the planet, working together toward a future where everyone has access to nature, nutritious food, equal rights, clean air and water, and a safe place to live, the chronic stress won’t go away. It’s up to us to save our brains and the world at large. Now there’s a stressful thought.