5 Ways Stress Affects Your Brain

We are all familiar with stress. This stress happens each and every day and comes in a wide variety of forms. It might be the stress of trying to juggle family, work, and school commitments. It might involve issues like health, money, and relationships. In each instance where we face a potential threat, our minds and bodies go into action, mobilizing to eitherdeal with the issues (fight) or avoid the problem (flight).

You have probably heard all about how bad stress is for your mind and body. It can lead to physical symptoms such as headaches and chest pain. It can produce mood problems such as anxiety or sadness. It can even lead to behavioral problems such as outbursts of anger or overeating.

What you might not know is that stress can also have a serious impact on your brain. In the face of stress, your brain goes through a series of reactions – some good and some bad – designed to mobilize and protect itself from potential threats.

Researchers have found that sometimes stress can help sharpen the mind and improve the ability to remember details about what is happening. In other cases, stress can produce a wide range of negative effects on the brain ranging from contributing to mental illness to actually shrinking the volume of the brain.

Let’s take a closer look at five of the most surprising ways that stress affects your brain.

Chronic stress might make you more susceptible to mental illness.

In a study published in Molecular Psychiatry, researchers found that chronic stress results in long-term changes in the brain. These changes, they suggest, might help explain why those who experience chronic stress are also more prone to mood and anxiety disorders later on in life.

Researchers from the University of California - Berkeley performed a series of experiments looking at the impact of chronic stress on the brain.

They discovered that such stress creates more myelin-producing cells, but fewer neuronsthan normal. The result of this disruption is an excess of myelin in certain areas of the brain, which interferes with the timing and balance of communication.

In particular, the researchers looked at how stress impacted the brain's hippocampus. They suggest that stress might play a role in the development of mental disorders such as depression and various emotional disorders.

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