What Can Stress Do to Your Brain? Exploring the Effects of Chronic Stress on the Brain

Many people wonder, "Can stress damage your brain?" The answer is yes. Chronic stress can harm your brain by disrupting neural connections, reducing brain volume, and impairing cognitive functions. However, with proper interventions and stress management techniques, you can mitigate these effects and support brain health.

With everything we must deal with in today's busy world, from juggling work, family, and school to dealing with issues such as relationships, money, and health, we are bound to encounter stress in our daily lives. Not all stress is bad. Some level of stress is necessary for our survival and can even be beneficial.

There are two main types of stress: acute stress and chronic stress.

Acute stress is short-term stress and is often triggered by specific daily life events or situations, such as a deadline at work or a misunderstanding with a family member. Acute stress can be helpful in certain situations, as it can motivate us to take action, solve problems, and perform at our best. Once the stressful situation has passed, our bodies typically return to equilibrium.

On the other hand, chronic stress is long-term and ongoing, often resulting from persistent challenges or unresolved traumatic events in our lives. This type of stress can negatively affect our physical and mental health if left unchecked. Excessive and chronic work stress can lead to burnout syndrome. 

You may already know that stress can make you have chest pain and headaches or make you overreact and have outbursts of anger. It can also cause mood problems like sadness and anxiety and actually make you sick.

But stress can also have adverse effects on brain functions.

Let's find out what happens to your brain when you experience chronic stress. And more importantly, learn what you can do to reverse the effects of chronic stress on the brain and body.

Chronic Stress Affects the Brain in Numerous Ways

Cortisol, the hormone produced when faced with a stressful event, is a valuable hormone that helps us deal with danger. It creates the appropriate physiological responses in our bodies that prepare the brain for the fight-or-flight response.

But there's a catch: while in the beginning, cortisol amplifies alertness and memory function, which helps us deal with a stressful event, frequent production of this hormone can have adverse outcomes, both on our mental and physical health. It leads to changes in brain structure and causes high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s disease, and increased heart rate.

Too much cortisol production can cause brain cells to start dying. Prolonged stress can decrease the amygdala—the region of the brain tasked with processing emotions—which can interfere with mood regulation and cause mental health illnesses such as anxiety and depression. Cortisol is also toxic to the hippocampus, an area of the brain tasked with memory function.

Physiological Effects of Stress on the Brain

When you experience a stressful event, whether it's something environmental like an upcoming work deadline or psychological like consistent worry about a chronic illness, the brain responds by producing a gush of stress hormones (cortisol), which is triggered to produce well-organized physiological responses. That is why you will find that whenever you face a stressful situation, your heart pounds, and you start breathing heavily. Your muscles may also tense, and beads of sweat appear.

This amalgamation of reactions is the fight or flight response, triggered by the sympathetic nervous system to help you fight or flee threatening situations.

Cortisol also plays a vital role in restoring the body's equilibrium after stressful events by regulating glucose levels in cells. When the threat passes, cortisol levels fall, causing the body to return to stasis. It also helps in brain processing and memory storage.

However, severe, and prolonged stress forces the body to produce elevated cortisol levels, which is more than it can release, making it keep activating the fight or flight response.

Exposure to too much cortisol levels and other stress hormones and frequent activation of the stress response system can wreak havoc on all the body's processes, interfering with the immune function and putting you at risk of different health problems, including depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, mood disorders, chronic inflammation, and heart disease.

If you want to learn more about the brain, we recommend our free member series, Brain Basics: A Beginner's Guide to Neuroscience.

What Can Stress Do to Your Brain? 4 Types of Stress Damage to Brain

As we have seen, not all stress is bad; we also have good stress. However, toxic brain stress can lead to the buildup of high cortisol levels in the brain, leading to many health problems.

Here is how long-term acute stress affects your brain health.

1. Reduced Resilience to Future Stress

While chronic, everyday stressful events may not have a big impact on brain volume, they may put you at risk of brain shrinkage when intense, traumatic stressors accompany them. Chronic toxic stress can damage brain cells and shrink the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain tasked with memory and learning. Thus, repeated stress can make it more difficult for an individual to cope with future stressors because of the reduced brain volume.

Stress can lessen the prefrontal cortex, but it can also enlarge the amygdala, which may make the brain more susceptible to stress. As Christopher Bergland writes, cortisol is believed to create a chain reaction that builds connections between the hippocampus and amygdala, potentially leading to a vicious cycle where the brain is in a never-ending state of fight or flight response.

2. Stress Changes the Brain's Structure

Chronic stress can negatively impact the brain structure and functioning. Grey matter is a crucial part of the brain for high-level thinking, including problem-solving and decision-making. On the other hand, the brain also has what we call white matter, which helps axons communicate information. White matter is also called myelin because of the white fatty sheaths surrounding its axonal structure.

Chronic stress induces an overproduction of myelin, which not only leads to the short-term imbalance between grey and white matter but also causes long-lasting changes in the brain's structure, disrupting the brain's delicate balance of communication.

3. Chronic Stress Increases Mental Illness

Research has found that chronic stress contributes largely to the onset of various psychiatric conditions, such as bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression. According to these studies, chronic stress causes long-term changes in the brain, which may explain why people who deal with prolonged stress are also prone to anxiety and mood disorders later in life.

4. Effects of Chronic Stress on IQ and Intelligence

When we talk about the effects of stress on intelligence quotient (IQ), we are referring to how stress affects your brain's capacity to complete simple or complex tasks (things measured by IQ tests that can be signs of cognitive health).

Chronic stress can indeed impact cognitive function, including aspects related to IQ. While chronic stress itself may not directly lower IQ scores, it can undoubtedly hinder cognitive performance over time, potentially leading to difficulties in learning, problem-solving, and overall intellectual functioning. Prolonged exposure to stress hormones like cortisol can interfere with brain functions, leading to impaired memory and reduced attention and decision-making abilities.

As stated above, chronic stress causes structural changes in the brain, for instance, in the hippocampus, an area responsible for learning and memory. Prolonged exposure to stress hormones like cortisol can lead to the atrophy or shrinkage of the brain's hippocampus, impairing its function and affecting memory consolidation. As a result, individuals experiencing chronic stress may struggle with learning new information and recalling previously learned material, which can ultimately impact their IQ.

Also, chronic stress may affect the prefrontal cortex activity, leading to impaired executive functioning. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the brain area that intelligently regulates our emotions, actions, and thoughts through vast connections with other brain areas. It is also one area that is highly sensitive to the harmful effects of stress. 

Chronic stress leads to architectural changes in the prefrontal dendrites, but even mild uncontrollable stress can lead to rapid and dramatic loss of cognitive abilities in this brain region. This may cause difficulties with impulse control, cognitive flexibility, and goal-directed behavior.

This entire process may help to explain why meditation and mindfulness have a positive impact on cognitive health, memory, and IQ scores. They work to reverse the damage from the stress response on the brain.

Can Brain Functions Be Restored After Damage from Stress? 

While it's true that neural pathways such as the one between the amygdala and the hippocampus can be seriously damaged by prolonged exposure to stress, such changes are not permanent.

The brain can easily recover from the effects of stress. As research suggests, young adults have higher chances of recovery from the effects of stress than older adults. As you age, creating or regaining new brain cells becomes much more challenging.

That is not to say there's no hope for adults. Activities or things that combat the effects of stress on the wear-and-tear on the brain can work for anyone, regardless of age. Interventions such as engaging in physical activity, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, deep breathing exercises, finding your purpose in life, and having a solid social network can all help to enable plasticity and improve cognitive health.

9 Strategies to Reverse the Impact of Stress Hormones on Physical and Mental Health

Reversing the impact of stress hormones on your body and mind requires a holistic approach that targets both physical and mental health. By incorporating the following tips into your daily routine, you can reduce stress, promote healing, and support overall well-being. 

These nine strategies, backed by research, can help mitigate the effects of chronic stress and enhance your quality of life.

1. Exercise Regularly: Engaging in physical activities can lower cortisol levels and reduce stress. Exercise and movement also help improve mood by boosting the production of endorphins.
2. Maintain a Healthy Diet: Eating a balanced diet rich in antioxidants can combat the effects of toxic stress. Nutrients from a healthy diet support brain and body functions and help reduce inflammation in the blood vessels.
3. Practice Mindfulness and Meditation: Mindfulness practices can help calm the sympathetic nervous system and lower blood pressure. Meditation promotes emotional processing and helps reduce muscle tension and stress response. Both have a significant impact on the brain.
4. Get Adequate Sleep: Proper sleep hygiene is crucial for brain health. Quality sleep helps restore neural pathways and supports overall mental health.
5. Improve Time Management: Efficiently managing your time can significantly reduce stress levels. By prioritizing tasks, setting realistic goals, and breaking projects into manageable steps, you can avoid the overwhelm that often accompanies poor time management. Effective time management helps decrease cortisol levels, lowers the risk of stress-related health issues, and promotes a sense of control over your daily activities.
6. Foster Strong Social Connections:  A solid support network can help reduce stress and improve overall well-being. Social interactions are vital for emotional support and reducing loneliness and isolation.
7. Engage in Hobbies and Learn New Things: Pursuing hobbies and learning new skills can be a great way to alleviate stress. Engaging in activities you enjoy can provide a mental break from daily pressures, lower stress hormones, and promote a sense of accomplishment. Additionally, learning new things stimulates the brain, improves cognitive function, and contributes to overall mental health and well-being.
8. Take Regular Breaks: Incorporating regular breaks into your daily routine can help reduce stress and prevent burnout. Short, frequent breaks allow your mind and body to recover from intense focus and reduce muscle tension. Activities like stretching, walking, or simply stepping away from your workspace can lower cortisol levels and improve overall productivity and mental clarity.
9. Seek Professional Help: If you have tried the other things on this list and are not seeing a difference, it may be time for outside help. Consulting with healthcare professionals can provide personalized strategies to manage stress effectively. Cognitive behavioral therapy can be particularly beneficial in breaking the vicious cycle of stress and improving mental health.

By incorporating these strategies into your daily routine and taking care of your workplace well-being, you can help your brain and body recover from the detrimental effects of stress. 

Remember, the ability to reduce stress and enhance cognitive function is within your reach, regardless of age or previous stress exposure.