Protect Your Brain From the Ravages of Stress This Holiday

For a lot of people, the holiday season is anything but “the most wonderful time of the year.” Instead, it’s more like “the most stressful time of the year.”

If that’s you, you’re not alone. A Psychology Today study found that nearly 40% of us experience higher than usual levels of stress during the holidays. All that extra stress isn't just making us feel like a Scrooge, it’s also wreaking havoc on our bodies and our brains and putting our health at risk.

Fortunately, there are ways to manage stress and protect yourself from the damage it does.

Listen to Your Body: Signs of Stress

If you’re a human adult in this country, you’re likely familiar with the signs of stress.

You struggle to concentrate. You constantly forget where you put your keys or glasses. You feel disorganized, irritable, overwhelmed, and exhausted by all the things on your work and home to-do lists. You might be in a constant state of worry or irritation. Physical symptoms such as chest pain, neck pain, and headaches are regular visitors. And on your worst day? You feel like you’re on the brink of a total meltdown.

Stress is a normal response to what’s going on in your life on a day-to-day basis. The response is meant to protect you against acute threats, like from a saber tooth tiger. Since you’re not faced with having to outrun wild animals these days; however, your body treats any serious demand on you — like heavy workloads, tight deadlines, that growing stack of bills, family issues, jam-packed schedules — as threats. Your body and brain feel as if they’re under attack, so they produce flight-or-fight hormones to protect you and get you through the danger.

Once the perceived threat is gone, the body’s systems go back to normal. But if you always feel under attack, fight-or-flight stays on, which makes the body’s processes, including brain functions, go haywire.

“Stress interferes with cognition, attention, memory, and other brain functions, like mood and anxiety,” said Jill Goldstein, Ph.D., M.P.H., a professor of psychiatry and medicine at Harvard Medical School. 

Dr. Goldstein also said that stress is damaging to your cognitive health — your ability to think, learn, and remember — which lessens your ability to carry out your everyday activities and process and store memories.” In addition, chronic stress can lead to changes in your brain, which can lead to cognitive decline and even dementia later in life.

“There is no health without brain health,” said Maggie Moon, M.S., RD, Los Angeles-based registered dietitian. “The brain manages nearly everything the body does, from breathing to thinking, learning, and remembering.” 

In addition, constant stress puts you at a greater risk of developing health problems, now and in the future, such as:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Digestive problems
• Headaches
• Muscle tension and pain
• Heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure, and stroke
• Sleep problems
• Weight gain

Learning how to manage your stressors is key to protecting your body and your brain.

Prioritize Self Care to Manage Stress 

Evidence abounds that healthful lifestyle choices may help protect the brain from some of the damaging effects of stress. These choices include:

• Eating a healthy diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, like the Mediterranean diet.
• Getting regular exercise. Exercise, in almost any form, can act as a stress reliever because it boosts your feel-good endorphins and distracts you from what you’re worried about.
• Getting plenty of sleep. Sleep loss triggers the body’s stress response, which leads to an elevation in stress hormones, which further disrupts sleep.
• Relaxing. Doing relaxing activities can reduce symptoms of stress. They include listening to music, dancing, playing sports, reading, meditating, getting a massage, or journaling about your thoughts/what you’re grateful for, or practicing yoga, tai chi, or deep breathing. 
• Fostering healthy relationships. Talking things out with family or friends can help you manage stress because you feel supported during a stressful situation.
• Including laughter in your life, which could mean watching a funny movie or reading a funny book, releases feel-good hormones that lower stress.
• Stop worrying. Easier said than done, of course, but try not to worry about things you can’t control; putting a positive spin on a stressful situation can help you look at it differently.
• Taking a break. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, taking a break and doing a few stretches or taking a quick walk will renew your energy, clear your mind, and lower your stress.
• Managing your habits. Using unhealthy ways of managing stress, such as using alcohol, tobacco, drugs, or excess food, can backfire, making you feel worse.
• Simplifying your schedule. Trying to stuff more activities into an already stuffed day is a big cause of stress. Where possible, trim your to-do list by identifying what really has to get done or what things you really want to do.
• Seeking professional help. A therapist can help you learn skills to manage your stress, and learning to manage stress now could reduce your susceptibility to later developing conditions like Alzheimer’s and mental illness.

Takeaway

Whether you find the holiday season joyful and magical, jarring and exhausting, or a little bit of both, stress is the one guest that shouldn’t be invited to the party. When it comes to managing the effects of stress this holiday season, don’t be afraid of pulling out the big guns — the extreme self-care tactic of saying “yes” to what brings you joy and “no” to what brings you stress... without feeling like a Scrooge.

Contact your physician or your SENS Solution Wellness Program coach for additional help with managing your stress.

References

Psychology Today, American Psychological Association survey, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evidence-based-living/201712/what-we-know-about-the-holiday-blues

Mayo Clinic, Chronic stress puts your health at risk, https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress/art-20046037

National Institute on Aging, Cognitive Health and Older Adults,  https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/brain-health/cognitive-health-and-older-adults

NIH.gov, Participating in the arts creates paths to healthy aging, https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/participating-arts-creates-paths-healthy-aging

Verywellmind.com, How to Prevent Brain Shrinkage With Age, https://www.verywellmind.com/prevent-brain-shrinkage-2795016

Verywellmind.com, 5 Surprising Effects of Stress on the Brain, https://www.verywellmind.com/surprising-ways-that-stress-affects-your-brain-2795040

Psychology Today, A Brain Changer: How Stress Shapes Cognition and Memory, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-bridge/202202/brain-changer-how-stress-shapes-cognition-and-memory?msockid=13872277c428663d0d363011c5f167d9

Harvard Health, Protect your brain from stress, https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/protect-your-brain-from-stress

AARP, Grab Your Yoga Mat for Brain Health, https://blog.aarp.org/staying-sharp/yoga-brain-health/

Psych Central, 5 Cognitive Symptoms of Stress, https://psychcentral.com/stress/the-impact-of-stress#recap

MSN, Stress can scramble the brain so badly it changes your memories, https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/stress-can-scramble-the-brain-so-badly-it-changes-your-memories/ar-AA1uae80?ocid=nl_article_link