Dimensions of Stress

Many guides to dealing with stress are strictly practical. But first you need to know why it is not just a nice thing to do, but something that can effect your total health in serious ways. Stress is not just unpleasant...it is positively dangerous.

Today we are looking at the effects of stress on that vital organ, the brain. From experience you may know that when you are very stressed, it becomes more difficult to remember things clearly. You probably shrug this off as not all that important, just one of those things.

But science is warning us that just shrugging off these facts is not a useful thing to do. Serious levels of stress are when cortisol are consistently produced. This actually affect the functioning of the brain. (See the video below which shows the impact.)

Experiments with rats show that injecting rats with daily injections of corticosterone (rat cortisol) for several weeks at a time kills certain brain cells. Just causing rats the same amount of stress every day has the same effect.

Cortisol helps us deal with a challenge in the short term, but if it isn't managed and if we continue to produce it over time, we will also be killing of some brain cells and increases the likelihood of heart attacks and strokes.



The title of the blog is "stress aware" and as the vital first step, we do need to learn to self monitor our own stress levels and to know when it is time to take some radical action. The brain needs time to recover from a cortisol onslaught. Otherwise burn out can happen in the short term and in the long term even illnesses such as Dementia and stroke.

So one practical thing to do, is book time off work, even just for a long weekend! Ideally take a proper break of 2-3 weeks. It is not laziness or self indulgence, it just might help your brain cope with the high level of stress in your current lifestyle. And leave the mobile phone at home sometimes! Why should we be accessible to others 24/7 just because we can be? Sometimes putting your well being first is the most unselfish thing you can do.