Brain Inflammation, I know you might think, is this for real how is such an health alignment possible and why haven’t have we heard about it so far, well it’s true recent
Diagnosis on patients with clinical depression due to environmental chronic stress in combination with some genetic disorders has revealed that clinical depression.
And brain inflammation might be something we should be careful about and it is of utmost importance that we have a better understanding of stress and depression and how it can physical impact our body, as well as in developing better resistance for these mental health issues.
What Should We Know About Chronic Stress
Stress is commonly regarded as a fight or flight’ response which gets triggered when we sense a threat. Once the threat is out, the stress hormone levels stabilize, and there are not long-lasting effects on our body. On the contrary, chronic stress is extremely harmful to your health.
Unfortunately, our modern lives are full of such forms of stress. From a recent study, it was found that over 9 out of 10 visits to the doctor are stress-related. Chronic stress makes your body vulnerable to a lot more health risks than you can ever imagine.
How Does Chronic Stress Affect Your Brain
Our brain is a complex organ and gets easily affected by the enormous electrical pulses generated by increased stress. Some common symptoms include memory problems, unexplained sadness, and anxiety. However, most problems in the brain are to the naked eye, that is we usually neglect them as a health condition.
And because of this negligence stress may take effect without your notice and the side effects are experienced later. Stress kills brain cells due to the free radicals created in the brain. The extra
neurotransmitter glutamate causes radicals which will eat up the cells in our brain.
The Most Common Negative Effects Of Stress To The Brain Are:
- It makes you emotional and abnormally forgetful.
- It can create a vicious cycle of anxiety and unreasonable fear as well as depression.
- Stress can halt the brain functions and creation of new cells.
- Exposes toxins to the brain causing it to shrink and fall ill.
- It contributes to brain inflammation and depression.
- It causes health risks and in some cases suicide due to uncontrolled thoughts.
How Stress Halts The Production Of New Brain Cells:
We lose brain cells every day, and also make new ones. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a protein that our brain uses to keep your brain cells healthy and functioning at an optimum level. It also plays an important part in the formation of new brain cells. Think of the protein we eat to build muscles, well BDNF is like that, but for brain cells.
The next important factor is Cortisol. High levels of cortisol inhibit BDNF production. Which means your brain cells have no protein to keep the brain cells growing strong, and it also means that you’re missing one of essential building blocks of protein highly responsible of making new brain cells.
Lowered BDNF levels are associated with OCD, depression, dementia and other neurotropic diseases like
Alzheimer’s.
Stress Depletes Critical Brain Chemicals.
Our brain cells use a chemical called neurotransmitters to communicate with each other. You might have heard of some of these neurotransmitters, they’re called serotonin and dopamine.
Serotonin is the chemical our brain produces that makes us feel happy. It also plays a huge role in mood, learning, appetite control and sleep. Dopamine, on the other hand, is the chemical that gives us our fuel to achieve, it motivates us and gives us reason to strive and get the job done.
Cortisol can deplete serotonin and dopamine levels in our brain. It actually damages the receptor sites of these neurotransmitters. It was discovered that women who are low in serotonin are prone to depression and anxiety and interestingly, binge eating. On the other hand, men are more inclined towards alcoholism, ADHD and impulse control issues.
When our brain is low on dopamine, which is in charge of your motivation, you’re left feeling unenthusiastic, unmotivated and lethargic. And you’ll find yourself reaching for artificial means to give you a bit of get up and go. Coffee’s a big one, as is reaching for a sugar hit to get you over the hump, alcohol to get you through the evening, and even illicit drug use.
Clinically speaking, serotonin based depression is usually accompanied by anxiety and irritability whilst dopamine based depression presents as a lack of enjoying life and lethargy.
Coming Back To Treating Inflammation To Target Depression
It has been found that depression changes and affect immune responses and trigger inflammation similar to how stress does. But It’s not entirely certain. since the notion that depression is somehow linked to inflammation isn’t a new one.
In fact, though there is currently no government approved medication to treat depression-related brain inflammation, Few researchers have examined therapies in the past to overcome depression. In a 2014 study, researchers provided patients with anti-inflammatory treatment and found that it reduced depressive symptoms
Conclusion :
There is no ideal lifestyle choice which you can adopt to reduce stress however you can always seek the best in nutrition to help keep your mind and body healthy so that it can take on those huge amounts of stress, with that in mind try to keep yourself as happy and motivated as possible, because it’s only you who can help yourself
