We all face stress everyday.  Some have more than others like those with little ones or those with difficult coworkers or bosses.  Stress is just a part of life as we know it.  But what if we were to look at what the effects could be of this exposure to stress over time?   Is it possible that higher levels of stress can cause permanent chemical imbalances and permanent damage to the brain?

Studies recently conducted at Stanford and MIT have looked into this problem of permanency with prolonged stress levels.  It was found that the body produces certain chemicals like adrenaline, cortisol and others that can have a nasty or long lasting and even permanent effect on both the body and the brain.  Just like long term exposure to stress can cause problems with high blood pressure, heart disease and even COPD (cardiopulmonary disease) it can also have similar effects on the brain.

Long term exposure to high levels of stress can cause chemical imbalances where not enough of a hormone or chemical like dopamine and others is produced.  If you have seen the commercials for prescription Zoloft where the synapse between two brain cells is made into a cartoon and it shows how some people have severely reduced levels of dopamine or noreinephrin and other chemicals and the cartoon really drives home the point. 

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Stress causes this same effect over time.  Over time this reduction in crucial chemicals and hormones some of which are often thought of as precursors and building blocks to numerous important brain functions like short term and long term memory and comprehension can be severely detrimental.  Just like stress ages the body and its vital organs it can also age our brains and their ability to perform in certain tasks.

Apparently some tasks are more easily affected by long term subjection to stress than others.  For instance short term memory, apparently, is the first to be affected, but recovers more quickly than the other areas of the brain and thought.  You can see this for yourself.  After you have been in a highly stressful situation can you remember any small details?  What color was the paper on your bosses desk?  What color shirt and tie did they wear?  Yet you can remember what basically cause the stressful situation probably forever, right?  That's short term versus long term memory and the ability of your brain to switch off one almost completely.  Stress hormones flood our bodies and certain areas of the brain are made far more active then others.  The other areas are, depending on the amount of stress one is sujected to, sometimes even starved or completely shut off of their normal levels of hormones and even oxygen and nutrients.

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All one has to do is look at a CAT scan of the brain taken prior to the stress, during and then after.  You will see a huge difference and you can see the centers that become more active and those areas that become shut off.  The really interesting part here is that if you take enogh CAT scans of people to find a fair assumption of the areas of general, regular thought and the areas that are involved in stressful situations you get a pattern.  Then you take it another level and look into the CAT scans of people with longterm exposure to high levels of stress and those that have not been subjected to high levels of stress. 

There's another pattern with these high level stress people - and it's very similar to the brain CAT scans of drug users.  We have all seen the CAT scans of people's brains when normal and compared to long term drug users.  It causes long term and permanent brain damage.  Well, the same happens with long term stress.  It also robs the brain of essential hormones and chemicals and causes large dark or low function voides just like with drug users.  This is why some people actually thrive on stress and such - they are addicts to the chemicals and hormones that are released by the brain and body.  And the long term effects of this are dead voids and low or zero function in certain areas of the brain.  

Stress and its implications on the human brain, thought and memory are improtant enough that there are dozens of ongoing investigations, tests and research projest being conducted by leading researchers from Harvard, MIT and even Stanford (like Professor Cheryl Gore-Felton, Ph.D.  Maybe some new drugs or insights into this will result shortly that could benefit the quality of life for millions of people.  Or maybe they will find a cure for Alzheimers, dementia or even depression or something similar - all worthy causes.  My point here is to show you that stress can have long term negative effects on the brain.

So, basically, it is rather easy to conclude that long term subjection to stressful situations is not only bad for your body, but also for your brain.  We cannot cut out all stress from our lives.  That just is not possible.  But we can take steps to reduce the amount of stress that we are subjected to and to improve the quality of our lives.