Everyone is stressed out these days! Are you stressed out and ignoring it? You need to do something about it. You may be healthy and think that stress will not cause you any harm. Watch out! stress stealthily steals your health and cause all the damage.
Research says
Research links high levels of the stress to shrinking of the brain. Moreover, it may cause impaired memory in healthy middle-aged adults. In fact, this effect was seen more in women brains than in men.
One important point derived from the research is that stress affects the whole body, but the major damage happens to the brain. It is not just the hormones which affect. It is the traffic jams, personal problems, financial worries, perceptions and interpretations which causes stress.
Fortunately, research finds more effective ways to reduce stress.
What stresses our brain?
The main stress is our speed of life. The speed of life is more than our brain can adapt. Hence, we end up with little time and less resources to address our issues. As a result, we end up with a sense of no control over our lives. This piles up to be a huge source of stress.
Three challenges which affect our Brain
Wandering mind
Most of the time our minds keep wandering. Unknowingly, our mind is in an unfocused state. This state makes us unhappy. The unhappier we are, more negative thoughts pile up. Then we distract our mind and pay attention to something else, which piles up again. This causes more stress.
Negative events
Brain detects physical and emotional threats, which causes fear in us. However, the brain registers these events for future purposes. If these threats are negative then we remember them more than good things. This results in more stress.
Fatigue
Brain works hard, hence it needs rest. The more boring and intense an activity is, the faster the brain gets tired. This is Brain fatigue. This leads to stress which in turn leads to fatigue. It is a closed vicious loop.
Stress Hits Hard on Women
Women’s brains are more sensitive than men to stressors. They lack control too. Unfortunately, a women’s brain tends to remind her about hurts and insults. Hence, negative emotions are more.
Negative bias at work increases stress in women. Additional responsibilities of multiple demands of parenting, well-being of the household, a protective radar for her kids gives her a sense of threat more quickly. Hence, a woman gets more stressed than a man.
Men don’t always get stressed
When a man imagines a personalized, highly stressful event, his brain gets highly active for the action and plans well. Whereas, women’s brains are busy visualizing and emotionally processing the experience.
Women keep sharing their experiences, emotions and stressors whereas men access the cognitive -processing part of their brains and quickly think about doing something. They take an action.
Ironically, both the genders want is the emotional support of each other when stressed.
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