You need to learn how to build a healthy brain. Today, we know so much about the brain that it is paramount to put that knowledge to good use. When knowledge is applied it becomes wisdom because it comes from experience and experimentation. We know today that all emotional states affect you both psychologically and physically, including your brain.
The Stress Effect
My definition of stress is very simple: Stress is prolonged unhappiness. Stress is negativity.
Your body’s stress response kicks off as soon as you perceive a threat or danger, whether REAL or IMAGINED. The brain doesn’t know the difference. So it’s emotion that drives it.
Build a Healthy Brain by Counteracting Stress Response
The hypothalamus in your brain automatically sends signals down your spinal cord to the adrenal glands, located on top of your kidneys, which will secrete the stress hormone, adrenaline.
At the same time, your brain’s hypothalamus sends signals to your pituitary gland at the bottom of your brain and tells it to release factors to stimulate your adrenal cortex (in the adrenal glands I just talked about) to produce a stress hormone called cortisol.
Another part of the brain involved in the stress response is the hippocampus. The hippocampus is the part of the brain that deals with memories, learning, and emotions. It‘s also where most new brain cells are created. Make a note of this. This is very important for you to understand how to build a healthy brain! The type and quality of the memory counts.
When you’re upset or stressed out, cortisol floods all parts of your body, including the brain.
If the hippocampus is healthy, it tells the hypothalamus to stop releasing cortisol when it reaches a certain level. But if you’re often unhappy or stressed out, then too many stress hormones damage the hippocampus cells. So a damaged hippocampus can’t tell the hypothalamus to stop, so more stress hormones are released which causes a vicious cycle.
That’s why you might find that it takes you a long time to simmer down!
What you should also be concerned about is the effect of all this stress – too much cortisol excites the neurons too much and they start firing off too often. This starts KILLING neurons in the hippocampus. Another effect of cortisol results in fewer brain cells being created in the hippocampus. So, existing brain cells die off and new cells don’t get created.
Your brain actually shrinks. In this case, your brain is changing, but for the worst!
You Can Reverse This!
So you’ve got to do the opposite to grow those brain cells, create positive neural networks and build a healthy brain again.
In order to build a healthy brain, you have to choose to think differently and to feel differently. You want to turn on the Parasympathetic Nervous System. When that nervous system dominates, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin are flowing in abundance and you feel calm and happy.
Stress (unhappiness) Kills brain Cells. Optimism heals them.
Your brain is designed to learn new things. And that is precisely how you will build a healthy brain.
When you’re faced with new, mysterious, and unknown concepts, your right brain gets very active. You get excited! Your brain perks up. Then, if you keep at it, learning more and more about a new concept, you’ll also use what you may already know about similar situation(s) stored in the left hemisphere to understand it. Therefore, you understand something better.
So the right hemisphere processes new information when we run into something new and the left side processes routine familiar and automatic information and behavior. Now, you go from right brain to left brain IF you repeat the new behavior over and over and you feel emotionally attached to it. To learn something that’s good for you, you must have a strong emotional attachment to what you’re learning. That is how you create memories. Positive situations and feelings create positive memories.
As you embrace the new experience, what you learn goes over to the left side of the brain. Then all this information on the left side of your brain actually makes you ready to learn more and be more. You want learning to be a positive experience. And that is how you will build a healthy brain, whether you’ve got a concussion or any other kind of brain injury.
Dr. Joanny Liu, TCMD, RAc, P.Eng. Dr Joanny Liu “Best Selling Author and founder of Extraordinary Sports Medicine, where we help athletes reverse injury, get back in the game they love and improve their quality of life.” Best selling book at: Heal Your Concussion: How to Quickly and Effectively Get Back in the Game Remember, we’ve got two books about healing concussions in Amazon: Knock OUT Concussions, Heal Your Concussion: 21 Days to Brain Health, and Dr. Joanny’s new book, Heal Your Concussion: How to Quickly and Effectively Get Back in the Game is NOW live on Amazon!
