Sreemoyee Chatterjee
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This is how stress affects your brain © Shutterstock
There is hardly anyone on earth who leads a stress-free life these days. While stress can actually make your brain and body sick, experts say that not all stress is bad. According to them, a healthy amount of stress acts as a kick off and improves performance. However, stress reaches the tipping point pretty quick which the experts define as the fight-or-flight response. This happens when the brain gets active to our sympathetic nervous system and initiates several changes that we experience in our mind and body. There are several ways by which stress affects your brain. Find them here.
It raises heart rate and alters where your blood is primarily reaching in the body: When your brain is stressed, it makes it a priority to send more blood to organs and muscles that our ancestors needed when they went through stress. Experts say that at the state of stress, your body can see maximum blood supply to lungs, brain and large muscles like legs, arms and the sense organs including eyes, ears and nose. At the same time, the blood flow to skin automatically becomes lesser and makes you feel clammy and cold hands and feet. Blood flow to digestive system also goes down which is why you experience nausea and digestive disorders, diarrhoea and constipation. Due to less amount of blood being sent by your brain to the digestive system, your produce less saliva and you may experience dry mouth due to stress and anxiety.
Stress beats your logical thinking: According to experts, your brain activates the more primitive and emotional region of the brain, also known as limbic system, instead of the more complicated higher brain centres at the time of stress. Your limbic system is what moderates your emotion and reaction. When activated during stress, this region surpasses the more rational parts of brain and suppresses concentration, short term memory, rational thought and inhibition and forces us to act without the regulation of wisdom, memory, judgement and logic and most of your reactions turn out to be based on raw emotions.
Stress consumes chemicals of brain: In case you are suffering from severe level of recurrent stress, the chemicals in your brain that transmit messages from one nerve cell to another can be depleted. This results in making your brain sluggish and inefficient. This can result in several mental health issues like depression, sleep disturbances, racing thoughts and difficulty in concentrating, difficulty in learning, absent-mindedness, difficulty in decision making, obsessive or compulsive behaviours, increased hostility, worry and guilt.