Stop Negative Stress From Damaging Your Brain

Most likely, you are stressed and it is incredible the number of people who every day express that feeling stressed is the "normal of every day." This type of interpretation make us a lot of harm because it is a way of desensitizing ourselves to the risk of exhaustion.

Stress is very important to put ourselves into action and make us achieve goals, overcome difficulties or protect ourselves against risks. When you are in front of a saber-toothed tiger that wants to eat you, you must activate the survival system with which your body makes the blood goes to the extremities, the heart works five times faster and your attention is focused on the threatening aspects. In addition, the immune system is suppressed because it is not a priority as well as digestion and your brain is flooded with cortisol, the hormone that allows you to face danger and be victorious. This system that evolved thousands of years ago reacts the same to a call for attention from your boss, a problem with a client or an imaginary risk activating the fight and flight system.

The problem arises when we enter into chronic stress since by turning on the survival mechanism in a sustained way we generate alterations at the physical, emotional, and cognitive levels. This is partly due to the distraction in which we live that prevents us from entering a state of recovery, reabsorb cortisol and release serotonin and GABA to balance ourselves.

Also read: CONSUMPTION OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES HELPS OUR MENTAL HEALTH

At present we have sequential and simultaneous stressors (the email that does not stop, the pandemic, the economy, and the movies that we imagine), and this causes us to be on permanent alert which keeps cortisol levels elevated, deteriorating our hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with learning, memory and stress management.

But as in everything, there are always actions we can take to remedy it:

-Practice mindfulness, meditation, or any contemplative practice that allows you to maintain calm spaces throughout the day, three minutes of careful breathing is preferable to nothing.

-Get moving: You need to clear your brain and nothing better than going for a run, dancing, or just walking for twenty minutes.

-Hydrate yourself well: Your brain is 70% water, so the more stress you need, the more hydrated you need to be.

-Rest: Take a short ten-minute nap, stretch before going to bed, read a few pages of your favorite book.

-Free your mind: If you have a lot of mental noise, take a sheet and do a mental emptying that allows you to put problems in perspective and look for solutions.

Learning to activate the recovery and adaptation mechanism will allow you to learn from difficulties, adapt to change, and maintain your balance. I propose that you add a few more to the above activities that you can have on hand in different scenarios to regulate stress in your life.