Do you ever feel stressed? Of course you do.  How much? How often? Do you want to know how it affects your brain and body? If you want to know more, read on. If you aren’t interested, stop reading, and continue your rapid journey to the grave.

My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 55. The pain of seeing his vibrant being withering away has motivated me to learn much about brain functioning  and how stress affects brain capacity, emotional and physiological well being. This knowledge has helped me to incorporate certain brain and body training into my way of life.

One of the foremost brain researchers is Dr. Rajita Sinha, director of the Yale Stress Center. Most of this article reflects Dr. Sinha’s research and recommendations. Please read and heed!

• The relationship between stress, chronic disease, and addictive behavior

“When we are experiencing something threatening or stressful, two things happen immediately.  The first thing is what we call the ‘fight or flight’ arousal response. The whole body is gearing up to move quickly to get out of danger.  And the second thing is that the body releases the stress hormone cortisol. The body gears up immediately in the face of stressful stimuli. It goes to our energy stores, and releases glucose and insulin so that our muscles have the energy to deal with the stress. … Drugs like alcohol, nicotine and cocaine, and also high-fat, high-calories comfort foods, are powerful modifiers of the stress system. They will change our stress pathways and affect the way our body is able to control our stress response. And so, after a period of binging, your body’s stress system eventually just wears out. Your adrenal gland, which is responsible for releasing the stress hormone, becomes weak or sputters out. Then it doesn’t signal properly to help us cope.  That, in turn, starts to affect us adversely — not just our biology, but also our emotional responses.”

• The adrenal gland can re-invigorate, but…

“The problem is that while your adrenals are recovering you are more likely to be stressed. And stress affects abstinence and increases chances of a relapse. So then you are caught in a vicious cycle of quickly degenerating health because both the stress and the substances are working together to wear down your body systems — your stress axis, your liver, kidney, heart, blood pressure. Then you are at a double whammy in terms of risk for heart disease and certain types of cancer.”

• Some people are more stress prone

“There are factors that can make a person even more vulnerable to stress related diseases and addiction: early trauma suffered in childhood, cumulative adversity, socio-economic status, education and also things like genetics and personality traits. … Cumulative adversity means the higher number of bad events, the smaller the prefrontal cortex. … This has two effects. There is less brain volume and the regions that help us adapt and cope are underactive. … Research shows that childhood stress can hardwire the brain for a lifetime of higher stress levels. Early traumatic experiences can increase children’s susceptibility to a range of high-risk behavior such as tobacco use, binge eating, and earlier onset of alcohol consumption.”

• The brain can be retrained

“The brain is very dynamic and capable of normalizing and regrowth (neuroplasticity) through certain types of treatment and therapy.”

Well, Respected Reader, congrats if you survived this bio-psychological discourse.  If you are still with me you will learned something, or been reminded, of critical importance for your well being. Life is stressful and during these hard economic times it is even more so for most people. Do yourself, and those around you, a favor by learning and practicing the various stress reduction methods that are available. Some of these methods would include more exercise, less food and drink but better quality, music, meditation, yoga, massage, healthy recreation and socializing, spiritual growth, orgasms, fun and laughter.

Thanks for reading this and, hopefully, applying it to take better care of yourself. You deserve to!

Dr. Stathas can be reached at 706-473-1780. Email:Stathas@plantationcable.net.Website: drstathas.googlepages.com. His Blog:drstathas.com