How Stress Affects Your Memory and Brain Health
If you or someone you know is beginning to experience symptoms of mental decline such as reduced memory and attention span as well as slower mental speed, I’m going to share with you a new medical technology that can have a profound effect on improving brain function and the quality of your life.
The most common thing I hear from people with memory and attention issues is, “I’m just getting older, and I’m learning to live with it.” No! It’s not because you’re getting older! It’s highly likely that your brain is degenerating at a fast rate and the decline is clear. We live in a time in which we now have an understanding that you don’t need to live with it. There are things you can do to not only slow down the process of brain degeneration, but more importantly improve what is called neuroplasticity – which is simply increasing your brain connections. You can improve your brain health at any age!
When it comes to discussing the brain, it’s vital to understand that any form of chronic physical, chemical, and emotional stress will speed up brain degeneration. You may be saying, “Come on, stress is all around me. How in the world am I going to get out of stress?” However, the issue is not about running away or hiding from stress. It’s about offsetting incoming demands with recovery. If you don’t offset these high stressors by implementing lifestyle principles and strategies, significant brain decline will happen.
When it comes to the nervous system, stress is stress! Whether it’s chronic stress from traffic, your job, or constant fighting with a significant other, it’s no different than the stress response that turns on if you have to run for your life from a tiger – or at one time, run from an enemy tribe. The only difference is that at some point if you escaped the tiger, you got to rest and recover. Whereas the chronic bombarding emotional stress of today’s world keeps coming! Our bodies were not designed to handle this long-term stress, specifically our brain.
For example, let’s use this as an illustration. You have a tiger coming at you from the corner of the room. Is it more important for you to determine the angle that the tiger is coming at you so you can figure out the best position that you want to move – or is it more important to get blood flow in the legs to RUN? Run of course! The frontal lobe of your brain is all about intellect. It’s about decision-making and planning; it is the rational, thinking part of your brain. The back of your brain is the more primitive and reflexive part. Now, your brain does not want to be contemplating anything when under stress. It wants to be reflexive so that you can run fast. Therefore, blood-flow shifts from the front of the brain to the back. This is the reason why we can’t think clearly when we are under a high amount of stress.
Nothing is more damaging to the brain than stress. In addition to emotional stress, the most common stressor for most Americans is a sugary, high-carb diet. Other common stressors that contribute to brain degeneration include smoking, food intolerances, food allergies, anemia, bacterial gut infections, poor digestion, joint pain and inflammation, and autoimmune diseases, just to name a few.
Now, there is also part of the brain called the hippocampus, which has been shown to start degenerating at increasing rates with high amounts of stress. What is the hippocampus? It’s a part of the brain that converts short-term memory to long-term memory. So what does that look like? You go into a room and you forget why you’re there, not once in a while, but often! Or you go to the grocery store and you have 3-4 items and you forget 1 or 2, not sometimes, but often. Or you just met someone, they tell you their name, and within 5 seconds or 10 seconds tops, you forgot it! And this happens often! This is telling us that there is a high probability of rapid brain degeneration occurring. This is most often due to the chronic stress one has had or is still experiencing in their life.
So please, don’t just learn to live with it. If you or someone you know is experiencing mental decline take action now! Please, if not for yourself, then for the people around you that you want to experience a full and joyful life with! If you would like to find out more about how we can assist you or someone you care about with mental decline in a safe and effective way, contact our office at (619) 287-4005 to schedule a free consultation where we can answer any questions you have to find out if and how we can help you with your healthcare needs.