Stay Sharp with the Mind Doctor by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2005-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

Stress and challenge

If you set some challenges for yourself after reading some of the earlier chapters in the book, you might have felt a certain amount of stress. The very nature of challenge is that you are attempting something that is slightly beyond what you typically do at the moment.

Stress is the mismatch between what you think you can do and what’s expected of you (including by yourself). Challenge means raising expectations a little, and so challenge can generate a little stress.

STRESS AND YOUR BRAIN

Moderate levels of stress can be energising and stimulating. But very high levels of prolonged stress – severe deprivation and poverty in an inner-city area for instance – can have serious negative effects on the brain. In particular, the memory organising centre of the brain – the hippocampus – is very sensitive to chemicals called glutamates that are pumped into the brain under stress.

When that stress is severe and prolonged, these glutamates can corrode some of the connections in the hippocampus and even cause the hippocampus to shrink. Veterans of the Vietnam war who had endured terrible battle conditions and had developed long-lasting post-traumatic stress disorder, for instance, tended to have a smaller hippocampus and poorer memory than other veterans. This may be one of a number of reasons why we suffer poor memory when we are stressed, though distraction and worry are likely to be much more significant. Fortunately, in most cases, these effects disappear when the stress lifts and memory and hippocampal size returns to normal.

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