Power Up Your Brain (12 page)

Alberto:
Gaining Respect for Self

A patient, “Chris,” once said to me, “Every job I’ve had has been stressful because I inevitably end up with a tyrannical boss who doesn’t respect my talent or contributions.” This man had been in psychotherapy for many years, trying to understand why he “got no respect.” He had exhaustively dissected his family dynamics and had worked very hard to uncover the reasons why he kept repeating this self-defeating pattern in his professional life.

I carefully pointed out to him that the answer lay in the neural networks of his brain that made sure familiar “reality” kept repeating itself. Psychology had helped him understand the childhood trauma that had established these networks in the first place— the fact that he was the eldest child of an elderly father, that he was seldom included by playmates when they chose teams, that he was driven to become an overachiever in school, and that he later dropped out of school altogether. But his understanding of the origins of his conflict with his bosses did not result in better everyday relationships, just as understanding how a virus affects the immune system does not cure the flu. I recommended brainenriching nutrients, knowing these would help regions in his limbic brain heal, which would allow new, higher cortical pathways to be established through other methods I would provide.

I also assigned Chris the contemplative practice of sitting quietly for ten minutes every morning and counting his breaths. I told him to ask himself, “Who am I?” and to discard every answer that came to him. One morning, in a sudden moment of insight, Chris realized that the people he worked for were not “demanding” of him or “demeaning” him as he had thought; rather, they simply expected the best from him because they saw a potential that he himself had not yet been able—or ready—to recognize.

My work with Chris then consisted of crafting a map for his future that would guide him to new beliefs, new behaviors, and a new direction in life founded on a deep and trusting relationship with the world.

CHAPTER 6

HOW STRESS HARMS
THE BRAIN

From an engineering standpoint, stress can be defined as the amount of resistance a material offers to being reshaped and reformed. When you place a load on a steel beam, the beam resists, keeping the building from collapsing. If the load is great enough, the beam gives way and the structure suffers damage or collapses. Psychological stress is similar. When we can no longer resist forces that are trying to shape and mold us, whether they are our spouse’s behavior or our nation’s economic decline, we break down, becoming anxious and depressed, unable to cope.

SOCIETAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL STRESS

Sources of stress are everywhere. The rate of technological change has never been as accelerated as it is today. College students are training for jobs that don’t yet exist. Americans in the workforce today can expect to go through at least three career changes in the course of their professional lives. Even thinking about this is stressful.

And while societal stressors affect our emotional health, biochemical stressors are also wreaking havoc inside our bodies. For example, many pesticides kill insects by destroying mitochondrial function, thus raising the obvious question: could pesticides contribute to the development of Parkinson’s in the general population? The answer has proved to be a resounding yes, with studies, beginning in 2000, showing a significant increase in the risk of developing Parkinson’s from even casual use of pesticides such as rotenone. Joan Stephenson, Ph.D., reported in the widely respected
Journal of the American Medical Association,
“Handling or applying insecticides also was linked with significantly elevated rates of Parkinson’s disease. Those who used insecticides in the garden showed a 50 percent increased risk of the disorder compared with those who had never been exposed to home pesticides of any type. In-home use of insect-killing chemicals was associated with a 70 percent increased risk of Parkinson’s disease, compared with no use of pesticide.”
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And since pesticides directly target mitochondrial function, there’s reason for much broader concern as mitochondrial function is impaired in all manner of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, autism, and epilepsy. And new research is focusing on the damaging effects on mitochondrial function as an explanation of the significant increase in risk for diabetes in people exposed to pesticides.

And environmental toxins don’t just affect individuals directly; their effects are transmitted to the next generation. Recent blood tests taken from the umbilical cords of newborns in the United States and Europe showed contamination by more than 200 toxic chemicals, including plastics.
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These babies are being born with a tremendous toxic burden that may greatly increase their chances of developing serious illnesses and degenerative brain disorders later in life.

And while these infants have no say in what toxins their mothers may have consumed, willingly or inadvertently, consenting adults are choosing to allow known toxins to enter their bodies. For example, it’s common knowledge that mercury fillings used by dentists release toxic gases that are readily absorbed by fat in the brain, where they interfere with the functioning of the nervous system. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to get this mercury poisoning out of the body

Whether transmitted in utero, ingested, inhaled, absorbed through the skin, or drilled into our teeth, such toxins impact our cells, which were not designed to eliminate large quantities of harmful environmental poisons.

ACUTE AND CHRONIC STRESS

Psychologists identify two kinds of stress: acute and chronic. Both affect the health of mitochondria in our cells and our general well-being.

Acute stress is relatively short-lived. It’s what you encounter when faced with a novel learning situation, and it is actually good for you in the sense that it allows you to remember the event, be it positive or negative. This is the type of stress you experience when you’re challenged to be your best, whether as a child about to make your first solo musical performance at school or as an adult when faced with a demanding intellectual situation or a physical challenge such as running a marathon. I (Alberto) was in Chile during the devastating 8.8 magnitude earthquake of 2010. While it was a terrifying experience to have the earth move under my feet for several minutes, this catastrophe brought out the best in people, as neighbors rallied to help each other tend to those who were hurt and to help rebuild their homes and their lives.

Chronic stress is long-lasting. It occurs when you worry all month about how you’re going to make your mortgage payment, or when you dread every day waking up next to the person you married many years earlier, or when your cells are continuously burdened with eliminating toxic wastes and heavy metals acquired from a polluted environment and now stored within the cell wall. The great earthquake in Chile was followed by a month of aftershocks—more than 300 greater than 5.0 in magnitude in total. During this month, everyone slept fitfully, as they did not know when the earth would start shaking again. After two weeks, the entire population was sleep-deprived and exhausted, with their fight-or-flight systems stuck in the on position because there was no one to fight and nowhere to flee.

Our bodies have a system in place to deal with stress. The HPA axis—which refers to three organs, the hypothalamus, the pituitary, and the adrenal glands—regulates our fight-or-flight system. The pituitary gland and hypothalamus are both located within the limbic brain, and the adrenal glands are located above the kidneys. If the amygdala perceives an imminent threat, the HPA axis, rather than passing the signal along to the neocortex for logical processing, releases stress hormones—cortisol and adrenaline— into the bloodstream. These steroids give us quick energy, increase our heart rate, direct blood away from digestion and other nonemergency body functions, and reroute blood to our extremities and muscles so we can fight or flee. The advantages offered by the rapid response of our HPA axis are clear. Just as primitive man was able to avoid being attacked by an animal during a hunt, we today can quickly move out of the way of an oncoming car or an angry colleague.

In times of danger, this chemical influx is necessary to help us fight or flee, but we can get locked into a state of chronic stress when the adrenal glands don’t receive a signal to stop producing these hormones. Unlike acute stress, which serves a positive purpose, chronic stress is very destructive. In Colonial times the legendary pirates of the Caribbean learned that citizens in a city under siege were more effectively worn down by the sound of cannons firing than by the actual damage done to their town by the cannonballs. This was because the sounds of the guns kept the townspeople in a state of chronic stress, unable to fight or flee, or get a good night’s rest. Long-term exposure to stress has very profound consequences.

THE DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS OF CHRONIC STRESS

Relating this information back to what we have already learned about the evolution of the brain, it’s important to note that the stress hormone cortisol, which is produced in excessive amounts when the HPA axis is locked in a state of chronic stress, increases the damaging effects of free radicals in the neurons of the hippocampus. This causes damage to the mitochondria, which in turn causes even more free radical production. The final act in this tragic play is that the hippocampal neurons themselves perish through the process of apoptosis. And when hippocampal neurons die, learning and creativity become almost impossible. And brain synergy is out of the question. The avoidance of pain overshadows natural curiosity; we hesitate to rock the boat; we hoard needlessly and risk foolishly. We become paralyzed by an inability to discover novel solutions and are unable to
think
or
feel
originally anymore. If we remain under acute stress long enough, our adrenals eventually give out and we become drained and exhausted.

In a recent study, Eduardo Dias-Ferreira and his colleagues at the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal, demonstrated that chronically stressed rats lose their ability to break out of repetitive behavior patterns and become less creative and less cunning.
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Essentially, stress changes the rodents’ behavior, predisposing the animals to doing the same things over and over. In commenting on the study, Robert Sapolsky a neurobiologist who studies stress at Stanford University School of Medicine, remarked, “This is a great model for understanding why we end up in a rut, and then dig ourselves deeper and deeper into that rut . . . we’re lousy at recognizing when our normal coping mechanisms aren’t working.”
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