
What Stress Does to the Brain - laurex
https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-stress-14580/
======
want2know
Some time ago I had a long period of intense stress. It is amazing how much it
changes your mind and body.

Muscles contract causing all kinds of insuline problems, your hormones become
a mess, and all this is raising stress levels more because you don't know what
is going on in your body.

And then an anxiety disorder is right around the corner.

And when everything is ok again your brain produces stress hormones when you
hear a sound that would trigger you earlier or just a smell or a color.

I think this is the most difficult part to get back to normal:

The brain brings you in stress mode for no obvious reason. Then you have to
reason about it so the stress goes away and you will slowly reset your brain.

But I doubt the paths in the brain will ever go away. It will be like a
overgrown path in the end but it is still there.

~~~
coldcode
I am in such a period and have been for months. Stupid company demands we ship
something no matter what, even though there is insufficient time to do all the
work, and they keep adding more on top of it. I work 7 days a week, no
vacations, hardly even a weekend day off much less a vacation. I even lost my
temper at work and yelled a lot, something I never do. This is no way to do
proper work either. At least what little time I have away from this nightmare
I do art which helps somewhat.

~~~
wodenokoto
Not to add another load on your mind, but the long-term issue here is that -
assuming this is a crunch that ends - you will still be heavily affected for a
long time during normal, non-stress periods.

It takes a long pause from stress for you mind and body to stop over-producing
stress hormones.

I hope you situation changes for the better soon, and when it does, remember
to be mindfull of yourself and accept that everything won't go back to normal
right away, just because the external stress-factor stops.

~~~
mistermann
> It takes a long pause from stress for you mind and body to stop over-
> producing stress hormones.

I can vouch for this, I feel like I have been permanently damaged from a
multi-year stressful job.

Speaking of stress hormones, does anyone in this thread know if there's some
quantitative way to measure stress hormone levels, even if it's only somewhat
accurate?

The best real relief I've managed to find is microdosing psilocybin combined
with meditation, this seems to allow me to see right through my negative
beliefs & perceptions, but also largely eliminate the ongoing ~unavoidable
mental/emotional (eventually manifesting in physical) reactions to them. It
feels like it allows me to mostly not give a fuck about things like normal
people. Perhaps something the grandparent should look into.

~~~
blackflame7000
Yes, stress levels are tied to cortisol levels in the bloodstream. This is
especially bad for your physical health as it will cause you to store fat and
crave sugary foods. The single best thing you can do is exercise 5 times a
week for at least 45 minutes. It will retrain your brain to embrace stress
because of the endorphin reward you get after. I promise you, the gym is never
as hard as people make it out to be in their mind. 90% is just showing up.
Don't take shrooms, you're just messing up your brain chemistry even more with
a temporary bandaid. Furthermore, you're treating yourself with a drugs side-
effect. If anything the drug you are looking for is Ativan or Xanax. I'm
someone who used to be majorly overweight, overworked and stressed to no end,
but exercise changed my life.

~~~
throwawayxyz51c
> If anything the drug you are looking for is Ativan or Xanax.

No it really isn't, even if it might seem that way in the short term.

Source: Personal. Xanax for occasional stress turned into Xanax for sleep
sometimes turned into Xanax every night or insomnia. Kicking the habit now and
it really sucks.

Stick to exercise and meditation. Actually agree with grandparent about the
benefits of psilocybin, but you probably shouldn't listen to a stranger on the
internet about that anyway.

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

~~~
throwaway344534
[https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/378800000485764460/e2e5...](https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/378800000485764460/e2e5c2e81b2b89f447b2ba98d384c439.jpeg)

------
trykondev
I've been thinking lately about the line between feeling "stimulated" and
feeling "stressed" by intellectual work. I certainly crave challenging
problems but I feel sometimes like that inherently brushes up against stress
-- thinking hard about a problem and hitting frustrating roadblocks along the
way is more stressful than laying on the beach, but also to me feels much more
meaningful.

I worry if the type of person who seeks out stimulating work and having that
become a source of stress is risking damaging their health in the longer term
-- I always vaguely assumed thinking hard about problems was a net positive
for my brain & would keep me mentally active, but perhaps it's worth thinking
about finding ways to keep doing this kind of work and at the same time
minimizing the impact of the stress it causes.

Maybe aiming to work only when feeling well-rested, or working without
deadlines could be things to consider along these lines -- I don't really have
a central thesis or solution to stress-free & stimulating work, but these
kinds of ideas have been on my mind.

~~~
mettamage
I thought quite a bit on the topic of craving and frustration. I wrote an
article about it that I could email to you if you would like.

And I learned a thing or two about stress when I studied psychology.

Here are my thoughts (without sources and a bit worse editing as I am on my
phone).

> I certainly crave challenging problems.

When crave something I always wonder how it is different vs a cocaine addict
craving cocaine. I crave mental stimulation as well, so here are my
observations:

1\. Psychological addiction is possible.

2\. Craving too much mental stimulation could weaken your social ties
depending on how you seek it out.

3\. You become intellectually sharper at whatever it is you’re stimulated by
but in almost all cases not sharper in other areas, even when skills are
transferable (unless the areas are really close).

4\. As almost always, following a chronic crave does not make you happier.
Like scratching an itch doesn’t make you happier.

Being frustrated is not an issue in my opinion. Frustration results from not
achieving your goal while you believe you should still be able to progress but
somehow you don’t. There is no stress there as you can simply do something
else. Take the option of doing something else away and then you do have stress
(e.g. this wasn’t a frustrating hobby problem in your free time but a problem
on your job that is making your company lose $10k per hour).

> I worry if the type of person who seeks out stimulating work and having that
> become a source of stress is risking damaging their health in the longer
> term

Only if it is chronic. Read about the HPA axis. It proposes a biological
explanation for depression through stress. Also, burnout is symptomatically
very similar to depression (I am on mobile cannot find the source now, but any
decent search engine can help).

> I always vaguely assumed thinking hard about problems was a net positive for
> my brain & would keep me mentally active

In this particular case the exercise analogy works. If you do anything
physical (or mental) that is beyond your capacity or stamina but you somehow
are forced to go through with it, then you will experience stress.

In closing only chronic stress is a bad thing since we can recuperate from
temporary stress. Aka we simply need the ability to rest and the ability to
recover.

On a short-term basis, stress is a good motivator to some.

Related to all of this (in an unusual way) is the self-determination theory of
motivation. What you may see here is that in my examples people have little to
no autonomy and that results in stress.

~~~
dkersten
> When crave something I always wonder how it is different vs a cocaine addict
> craving cocaine.

Lately, I've been trying to give myself plenty of boredom time. I still fail
at it a lot, but I try to do most things with purpose now: I don't listen to
music just because, for example, instead I decide I want to listen to music
and then sit down to do just that. I feel I enjoy it a lot more this way! I
also don't idly listen while travelling or walking anymore. I go for walks
almost every day now and I enjoy the quiet as much as the exercise. I also try
not to idly read stuff online (especially on my phone). I definitely still
fail at this, but slowly I'm improving. Its better to spend half an hour bored
than mindlessly reading stuff. There's been plenty of articles here about how
boredom is good for your brain, after all.

Having said that, I do find it very difficult to do work that isn't mentally
stimulating.

> On a short-term basis, stress is a good motivator to some.

When I was in my early twenties, I worked very very well under stress. Having
a lot of pressure pushed me harder and I got a lot done in a short space of
time. As I get older, though, I find that the stress bleeds over to the rest
of my life and I'm less able to just shrug it off or channel it to get work
done, so now too much stress slows me down instead, and seems to negatively
effect my life and health in other ways instead. A small bit of stress is
fine, of course, but chronic stress is, I believe, very unhealthy.

Anecdotally, I had a ton of health issues a few years ago that I believe (and
the doctors said its possible when I asked about it) that they were all a side
effect of my few years as a startup founder. Again, anecdotally, I've known
other startup founders (including my current boss) who have had probably-
stress-induced health problems. Its an aspect of startups people rarely talk
about or warn you about.

~~~
mettamage
I feel like I'm almost reading my own writing here. I have very similar
experiences.

> Its an aspect of startups people rarely talk about or warn you about.

I agree, and it should be talked about more. The same is true for other high
performance jobs (e.g. investment banking or consulting), where high
performance means working a lot of hours.

I also think Ycombinator could improve on this as I remember Sam Altman saying
during a Startup School lecture (paraphrased): if you get a burnout, fix it. I
felt like he implied to just make it work somehow, it doesn't matter how.

In fairness, most of these people aren't mental health professionals and
somehow had to deal with these things themselves as well and they are simply
sharing their views on how they dealt with it. What I wonder is if they
reflect on the idea that some people that this as advice and moreover take it
to heart. Taking a personal strategy of someone else to heart seems quite
dangerous to me.

~~~
dkersten
Its not just mental health that stress affects, but physical health too. I had
stomach problems for a long time that seem to have been caused by stress and
went away when I eliminated much of the stress. It was never concretely
confirmed that it was stress related, but my doctors didn’t object to the idea
either.

I absolutely agree that taking other peoples personal strategies without
making sure they will work for you is unhealthy.

------
rzzzt
It would be helpful to tag articles about animal model studies and early stage
drug trials on HN, similar to [pdf] and [video] content; would tone down the
clickbait/sensationalism levels without the need to modify the submission
title.

~~~
e1g
Like this novelty Twitter account
[https://mobile.twitter.com/justsaysinmice](https://mobile.twitter.com/justsaysinmice)
which points out hilarity of sensational headlines that are based on distant
experiments on mice.

~~~
rzzzt
Indeed, seeing it mentioned in another article was one of the inspirations for
my comment.

On another note, does anyone know how they actually perform (f)MRI on mice?

------
mkagenius
My body also changes due to stress. I get rashes on my hand if I get stressed
for more than 2 days at a stretch.

~~~
ductionist
If you don’t mind sharing - what kind of rashes?

~~~
Tempest1981
From
[https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317631.php](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317631.php)

"It is also possible for emotional stress to trigger an outbreak of hives.
There can be a number of hormonal or chemical changes that occur in response
to stress.

These changes can trigger blood vessels to expand and leak, causing red and
swollen patches of skin."

~~~
speedplane
> It is also possible for emotional stress to trigger an outbreak of hives.

No doubt, stress has physiological effects, but so does laughter and
excitement. Having stress is a normal part of being a human. In reasonable
doses it's fine.

~~~
arethuza
I've always found it ironic that one of the best antidotes for day to day
stress is to be in a situation where you get "stressed" in a completely
different way... (the main factor in the 'positive' stress situations for me
being in fairly complete control, confidence in your own abilities and
requirement to focus on the matter in hand for a few hours).

~~~
JoeSamoa
Good observation.

------
mlurp
Professor Sapolsky has talked about this in a somewhat different context as
well, about what it does during childhood development. Really tragic actually.

~~~
leoh
Any links?

~~~
dredmorbius
Playlist: Sapolsky and stress

[https://www.invidio.us/playlist?list=PLY5d5qxwc2vvad_lbulFmo...](https://www.invidio.us/playlist?list=PLY5d5qxwc2vvad_lbulFmoR4XfZMz_3SG)

------
fyfy18
Is the summary accurate? It says "A new study sheds light on how the brain
changes as a result of chronic stress", but the rest of the article only
mentions acute stress.

~~~
alok-g
+1

It's not uncommon to see such basic flaws or misinterpretations in various
articles.

------
osrec
Stress is such a stupid thing. Here in London, you're almost celebrated for
having a stressful job. Neither does it improve productivity in the long term,
nor does it support a healthy life. I wished more managers would understand
that.

------
dr_dshiv
There are some important dimensions of stress that often get lumped together
in a way that can be misleading.

First, there is good and bad stress -- eustress and distress.

Second, there is acute and chronic stress.

This study addresses acute distress -- like a car accident. As they say, it is
hard to produce this in a lab study (for ethical reasons, one supposes).

------
jstrickshire
I believe that stress does cause a tremendous amount of damage to the brain.
I'm glad to see others share the same ideas. It may not be proven whether
damage is permanent or not. But it's not something that can be left alone.

------
ctack
Am busy doing the Win Hof method. From what I understand, norepinephrine and
particularly epinephrine release are desired goals of the cold exposure part
his method as they suppress release of pro inflammatory cytokines.

~~~
roel_v
*Wim, for those who might want to google.

~~~
ctack
Auto correct playing it’s vital part ;) Thank-you

------
FailMore
The article mentions that they hope that this will be useful when
understanding 'pathological hyperactivity of the noradrenaline system, which
is associated with anxiety and panic disorders'. For those interested, I wrote
a paper on how the fall of Norepinephrine during REM dreaming can help
diagnose the precise way to reduce this stress:
[https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz](https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz) Worked for me.

------
Hitton
It would be interesting to know if there is any connection to PTSD. I think
that rapidly created connections between different brain regions could be
plausible explanation.

------
garbre
So they stimulated norepinephrine release in rats in an fMRI machine and they
found it increased "activity" in sensory processing and the amygdala.
Presumably it would increase "activity" in "higher" regions of the brain,
except those only exist to a limited extent in rats.

For most humans, the question about stress is, "what is the effect of chronic
stress?" which this paper did not answer. I'm sure it was still a good study,
largely because it's demonstrating concrete mechanisms for things we think are
happening anyway, but I can't confirm that because it's behind a paywall, like
most publicly-funded research.

~~~
kranner
Preprint PDF:
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Johannes_Bohacek/public...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Johannes_Bohacek/publication/330604048_Rapid_Reconfiguration_of_the_Functional_Connectome_after_Chemogenetic_Locus_Coeruleus_Activation/links/5c4eab73a6fdccd6b5cecb0c/Rapid-
Reconfiguration-of-the-Functional-Connectome-after-Chemogenetic-Locus-
Coeruleus-Activation.pdf)

------
ezxs
To someone who is not a neuroscientist, what does this do? Yes the regions are
rewired, but aren't they rewired all the time anyway?

~~~
DoreenMichele
From the intro of this article:

 _Activity in the amygdala and networks that process sensory stimuli
increased._

The amygdala is a part of the brain that will dictate reactions to crisis
before you can consciously process it. It's called "amygdala hijack" and is
responsible for people doing things like leaping into a river to save a
drowning child before they fully register the child consciously, so they find
themselves in a river going "Why the hell am I here?" and then realize there's
a child drowning in front of them.

This is potentially dangerous. Vietnam vets and others with PTSD sometimes
strongly overreact to stimuli that aren't actually a signal of a problem. For
example, waking a Vietnam vet can get you assaulted before they realize you
aren't a danger to them, sort of like that scene where Wolverine skewers Rogue
because she wakes him from a nightmare, though usually not that dramatic. (I
have heard of people winding up in the ER though.)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack)

From an article written for lay people

 _Chronic Stress Increases the Risk of Mental Illness

Stress Changes the Brain's Structure.

Stress Kills Brain Cells.

Stress Shrinks the Brain._

Etc.

[https://www.verywellmind.com/surprising-ways-that-stress-
aff...](https://www.verywellmind.com/surprising-ways-that-stress-affects-your-
brain-2795040)

------
MarkMc
Paul Tough's book, "How Children Succeed" [1] has a great section on how
mother rats (called dams) can significantly counteract the stress of their
offspring (called pups):

"Scientists in rat labs are always picking up baby rats to examine them or
weigh them, and one day about ten years ago, researchers in Meaney’s lab
noticed a curious thing: When they put the pups back in the cages after
handling them, some dams would scurry over and spend a few minutes licking and
grooming their pups. Others would just ignore them. When the researchers
examined the rat pups, they discovered that this seemingly insignificant
practice had a distinct physiological effect. When a lab assistant handled a
rat pup, researchers found, it produced anxiety, a flood of stress hormones,
in the pup. The dam’s licking and grooming counteracted that anxiety and
calmed down that surge of hormones.

Meaney and his researchers were intrigued, and they wanted to learn more about
how licking and grooming worked and what kind of effect it had on the pups. So
they kept watching the rats, spending long days and nights with their faces
pressed up against the Plexiglas, and after many weeks of careful observation,
they made an additional discovery: different mother rats had different
patterns of licking and grooming, even in the absence of their pups' being
handled. So Meaney’s team undertook a new experiment, with a new set of dams,
to try to quantify these patterns. This time, they didn’t handle any of the
pups. They just closely observed each cage, an hour at a time, eight sessions
a day, for the first ten days of the pups' lives. Researchers counted every
instance of maternal licking and grooming. And after ten days, they divided
the dams into two categories: the ones that licked and groomed a lot, which
they labeled high LG, and the ones that licked and groomed a little, which
they labeled low LG.

...

The researchers ran test after test, and on each one, the high-LG offspring
excelled: They were better at mazes. They were more social. They were more
curious. They were less aggressive. They had more self-control. They were
healthier. They lived longer. Meaney and his researchers were astounded. What
seemed like a tiny variation in early mothering style, so small that decades
of researchers hadn’t noticed it, created huge behavioral differences in
mature rats, months after the licking and grooming had taken place. And the
effect wasn't just behavioral; it was biological too. When Meaney’s
researchers examined the brains of the adult rats, they found significant
differences in the stress-response systems of the high—LG and low-LG rats,
including big variations in the size and shape and complexity of the parts of
the brain that regulated stress."

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-
Charact...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-
Character/dp/1452658145)

~~~
drakonka
This is so interesting, thank you for sharing. I was recently thinking about
affection in my own early childhood - I grew up with loving parents (and
grandparents) who were happy to hug me etc. The only 'weird' thing that stands
out in terms of affection offered by my family is that my mom was apparently
afraid to hold me for the first few days after my birth - I was her first
child and she was worried she'd drop or hurt me in some way, so my grandmother
took care of me for that short period of time instead.

The problem was that _I_ always refused affection as a kid. I never came for
hugs or kisses or anything, and when my parents tried to hug me it always felt
really awkward for me. The only thing I'd come to my parents for would be back
scratches, which I loved. I didn't get a feeling of affection from the
scratches, they just felt physically pleasant and relaxing.

I wonder how, if at all, kids who refuse affection are impacted later in life.
I _think_ I grew up to be a fairly well adjusted person. If I try to find
something 'wrong' with me the only thing I can point to is some difficulty in
relating to negative emotions in others. I guess I'd be very curious to see
any studies about the flip-side - eg how many baby rats are resistant to the
'licking and grooming' offered by their mothers, and how are they impacted
later in life?

~~~
sjg007
We know human touch is important and that a lack of it will cause severe
psychological problems. The evidence is from Russian orphans with kids who
were never held or touched. There is also evidence with monkeys and the wire
doll mothers. This falls under the wider psychological theory Attachment and
need for the infant to have its needs met which is very dependent on the
parent. Attachment is probably a life long thing too.

As kids develop they shift from being parent oriented to peer oriented.

There are some cultural aspects as well, you see this largely expressed in
greetings and maybe extended family interactions.

As for a rat pup or infant refusing affection it is a warning sign for autism
spectrum disorder for sure.

~~~
drakonka
Even though I've jokingly been told I may be on the spectrum due to my
difficulty relating to some emotions, I was under the impression that autistic
children usually have speech delays and don't really want human attention,
which definitely wasn't the case for me - I just didn't want human _affection_
as a kid, but was perfectly happy to talk and bug my parents to play games
with me.

Either way I fear I'm going down a path of the kind of self-analysis that is
best left to a professional, so I'll leave it at that and enjoy feeling well-
adjusted even if it's all an illusion :D

------
ajt49
This is really interesting in terms of such an acute chemical change causing
such a systemic alteration in connectivity. I can imagine if you are under
stressful conditions constantly you can't truly function as these changes are
constantly occurring. You could see how this would lead to ptsd, depression,
other neurological conditions.

------
red0point
Original Source:

[https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-
news/news/2019/07/wha...](https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-
news/news/2019/07/what-stress-does-to-the-brain.html)

------
La-ang
Am I the only one relating this to PUBG, and that moment when you're low on
health, with a torn police vest, 30 bullets left in AKM, no compensator, no
meds and a whole squad taking the stairs up to come rip you apart?

------
blackflame7000
> "However, it is not possible to directly examine this theory in people,
> because noradrenaline release cannot be selectively manipulated."

This is exactly what ADHD medication like Vyvanse or Adderall does.

------
_bxg1
How I feel when reading an article about how bad stress is for you:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr9DI3YLOTA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr9DI3YLOTA)

