Asha The Hope

While no one can avoid having some stress in his or her life, ideally, you  should attempt to avoid chronic stress. A person who suffers from chronic stress will produce more than the normal amount of stress hormones in – 10 -their body. These excess hormones will affect the brain as well as the memory.

The worst hormone offender is cortisol, which can actually stop the brain from processing and storing a new memory. Cortisol can also keep the  brain from retrieving memories that have already been stored. The neurotransmitters in the brain are what the brain cells use to convey information to each other. This is why you temporarily cannot remember much of anything when you are caught up in a stressful situation. You are confused simply because of a hormone overload! It is easy to see how chronic stress can affect your brainpower.

Recently, researchers discovered that whenever people are involved in stressful situations and are unable to manipulate the outcome, an enzyme becomes active in the brain. This enzyme goes by the name of PKC, which stands for Protein Kinase C. PKC has the ability to diminish the short term memory.

PKC also can affect the prefrontal cortex area of the brain. This area is used for decision making, and is called the executive function area of the brain because it controls so many important behaviors. The PKC enzyme also affects those who suffer from bipolar disease and schizophrenia. Studies have shown that stress can often bring on the first episode of either one of these illnesses.Stress can do long term damage to the developing brain of a child. One study targeted children who lived in poverty. These children were given tests that measured their level of stress. This was done twice, at the ages of 9 and 13. The objective of these tests was to determine things such as the amount of stress hormone that was present in each child’s system, and what their individual blood pressure readings were. All of this information was carefully noted and filed away until these children reached the age of 17. At this point, they were all given another test. This test was to measure their working memory. The results were rather shocking. Their degree of working memory depended on how long they had been poor. Long-term poverty equaled a damaged working memory, and stress was determined to be the main reason for this memory loss.

Stress can even affect those who are yet to be born. Another study took pregnant monkeys and subjected them to the stress of a loud noise for 10 minutes each day. The infant monkeys were tested, and found to have fewer neurons than infant monkeys who had not been stress. A shortage of neurons, or brain cells, can thus be associated with stress.