BBC - Future - Why stress is dangerous - and how to avoid its effects
This gets into why I wish MRI and other methods to actually look at the brain should be a standard part of mental health care.
Quote:
In the first study of its kind, Ivanka Savic and colleagues at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and Stockholm University recently compared the brains of people suffering from work-related chronic stress to those of healthy, less stressed counterparts using structural magnetic resonance imaging techniques. They found a difference in regions active in attention allocation, decision-making, memory and emotion processing. In the stressed subjects, the prefrontal cortex appeared thinner, the amygdala appeared thicker and the caudate nucleus was smaller. The thinning in the prefrontal cortex correlated with worse emotion regulation.
A three month-long stress-rehabilitation program reversed thinning in the prefrontal cortex
To establish whether chronic stress was simply correlated to the changes or had caused the changes in the stressed individuals, the researchers scanned their brains again after a three month-long stress-rehabilitation program based on cognitive therapy and breathing exercises. The thinning in the prefrontal cortex was reversed. While the study had limitations (there was no “untreated stressed” control group), this reversal hinted at the possibility that chronic stress might have caused the thinning. Other studies have found that high circulating levels of the hormone cortisol correlates with worse memory and thinning in parts of the brain, even at a relatively young age.
These changes may partly be the consequence of the plastic nature of our brains, a manifestation of the brain’s extraordinary talent of adapting to whatever is demanded of it. In the middle of combat, for example, heightened emotional reactivity is a survival advantage, while higher cognitive functions become redundant. Recalibrating the brain’s baseline state to increase efficiency in this way can save a combat soldier’s life. In the setting of a workplace that relies on focus and complex decision-making, however, compromised emotion regulation and a decline in working memory will limit productivity. The change in the brain’s structure is maladaptive.
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I mean if people can get time off and worker’s comp for blown out knees, spinal, and carpal tunnel repetive stress injuries surely literal ****ing brain damage should get you some paid time off to heal.
Obviously I could never get it tested but I feel like work definitely did this kind of damage to my brain. My friend was badly burnt at the restaurant and he’s getting like a year to heal with pay and health pay.
If the conditions are so bad you become brain damaged that’s comparable.
This is a fight that can be won.
The Flaming Lips said, “The fight for our sanity is the fight for our lives”