14 ms·

What Stress Does to the Brain

331 points by laurex 7y ago

ezxs 7y ago
To someone who is not a neuroscientist, what does this do? Yes the regions are rewired, but aren't they rewired all the time anyway?
- sidcool 7y ago
  They may not be rewired in a helpful way.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  From the intro of this article: Activity in the amygdala and networks that process sensory stimuli increased. The amygdala is a part of the brain that will dictate reactions to crisis before you can consciously process it. It's called "amygdala hijack" and is responsible for people doing things like leaping into a river to save a drowning child before they fully register the child consciously, so they find themselves in a river going "Why the hell am I here?" and then realize there's a child drowning in front of them. This is potentially dangerous. Vietnam vets and others with PTSD sometimes strongly overreact to stimuli that aren't actually a signal of a problem. For example, waking a Vietnam vet can get you assaulted before they realize you aren't a danger to them, sort of like that scene where Wolverine skewers Rogue because she wakes him from a nightmare, though usually not that dramatic. (I have heard of people winding up in the ER though.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack From an article written for lay people Chronic Stress Increases the Risk of Mental Illness Stress Changes the Brain's Structure. Stress Kills Brain Cells. Stress Shrinks the Brain. Etc. https://www.verywellmind.com/surprising-ways-that-stress-affects-your-brain-2795040 https://www.verywellmind.com/surprising-ways-that-stress-aff...
- ubu7737 7y ago
  I suspect that in cases of moderate stress this mechanism is adaptive. And in extreme cases it is catastrophic.
garbre 7y ago
So they stimulated norepinephrine release in rats in an fMRI machine and they found it increased "activity" in sensory processing and the amygdala. Presumably it would increase "activity" in "higher" regions of the brain, except those only exist to a limited extent in rats. For most humans, the question about stress is, "what is the effect of chronic stress?" which this paper did not answer. I'm sure it was still a good study, largely because it's demonstrating concrete mechanisms for things we think are happening anyway, but I can't confirm that because it's behind a paywall, like most publicly-funded research.
- kranner 7y ago
  Preprint PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Johannes_Bohacek/publication/330604048_Rapid_Reconfiguration_of_the_Functional_Connectome_after_Chemogenetic_Locus_Coeruleus_Activation/links/5c4eab73a6fdccd6b5cecb0c/Rapid-Reconfiguration-of-the-Functional-Connectome-after-Chemogenetic-Locus-Coeruleus-Activation.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Johannes_Bohacek/public...
ctack 7y ago
Am busy doing the Win Hof method. From what I understand, norepinephrine and particularly epinephrine release are desired goals of the cold exposure part his method as they suppress release of pro inflammatory cytokines.
- roel_v 7y ago
  *Wim, for those who might want to google.
  - ctack 7y ago
    Auto correct playing it’s vital part ;) Thank-you
mlurp 7y ago
Professor Sapolsky has talked about this in a somewhat different context as well, about what it does during childhood development. Really tragic actually.
- leoh 7y ago
  Any links?
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Playlist: Sapolsky and stress https://www.invidio.us/playlist?list=PLY5d5qxwc2vvad_lbulFmoR4XfZMz_3SG https://www.invidio.us/playlist?list=PLY5d5qxwc2vvad_lbulFmo...
  - knbknb 7y ago
    The Great Courses has a non-free 24 * 30 min Coure "Stress and the Brain" given by Sapolsky .
- vmurthy 7y ago
  Don't forget his book "Why Zebras don't get ulcers" [0] [0]https://www.amazon.in/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Stress-Related-ebook/dp/B0037NX018/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= https://www.amazon.in/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Stress-Related-...
- eee_honda 7y ago
  re: childhood development - Arguably the more interesting work on this is how particularly intense acute periods of stress that would register as "trauma" predispositions an individual to things like much higher rates of ischemic heart failure, diabetes, and other health conditions that we might not typically relate to trauma. Then there's all the standard stuff you might expect, emotional dysregulation into adulthood, drug and alcohol abuse, suicidal behaviour, etc. See Dr. Vincent Felitti's Adverse Childhood Experience studies for more info.
fyfy18 7y ago
Is the summary accurate? It says "A new study sheds light on how the brain changes as a result of chronic stress", but the rest of the article only mentions acute stress.
- alok-g 7y ago
  +1 It's not uncommon to see such basic flaws or misinterpretations in various articles.
mkagenius 7y ago
My body also changes due to stress. I get rashes on my hand if I get stressed for more than 2 days at a stretch.
- ductionist 7y ago
  If you don’t mind sharing - what kind of rashes?
  - Tempest1981 7y ago
    From https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317631.php https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317631.php "It is also possible for emotional stress to trigger an outbreak of hives. There can be a number of hormonal or chemical changes that occur in response to stress. These changes can trigger blood vessels to expand and leak, causing red and swollen patches of skin."
    - cynicalreason 7y ago
      yeap .. I see this in myself occasionally and so far they seem to coincide with periods of stress
    - speedplane 7y ago
      > It is also possible for emotional stress to trigger an outbreak of hives. No doubt, stress has physiological effects, but so does laughter and excitement. Having stress is a normal part of being a human. In reasonable doses it's fine.
      - arethuza 7y ago
        I've always found it ironic that one of the best antidotes for day to day stress is to be in a situation where you get "stressed" in a completely different way... (the main factor in the 'positive' stress situations for me being in fairly complete control, confidence in your own abilities and requirement to focus on the matter in hand for a few hours).
rzzzt 7y ago
It would be helpful to tag articles about animal model studies and early stage drug trials on HN, similar to [pdf] and [video] content; would tone down the clickbait/sensationalism levels without the need to modify the submission title.
- e1g 7y ago
  Like this novelty Twitter account https://mobile.twitter.com/justsaysinmice https://mobile.twitter.com/justsaysinmice which points out hilarity of sensational headlines that are based on distant experiments on mice.
  - rzzzt 7y ago
    Indeed, seeing it mentioned in another article was one of the inspirations for my comment. On another note, does anyone know how they actually perform (f)MRI on mice?
red0point 7y ago
Original Source: https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2019/07/what-stress-does-to-the-brain.html https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2019/07/wha...
MarkMc 7y ago
Paul Tough's book, "How Children Succeed" [1] has a great section on how mother rats (called dams) can significantly counteract the stress of their offspring (called pups): "Scientists in rat labs are always picking up baby rats to examine them or weigh them, and one day about ten years ago, researchers in Meaney’s lab noticed a curious thing: When they put the pups back in the cages after handling them, some dams would scurry over and spend a few minutes licking and grooming their pups. Others would just ignore them. When the researchers examined the rat pups, they discovered that this seemingly insignificant practice had a distinct physiological effect. When a lab assistant handled a rat pup, researchers found, it produced anxiety, a flood of stress hormones, in the pup. The dam’s licking and grooming counteracted that anxiety and calmed down that surge of hormones. Meaney and his researchers were intrigued, and they wanted to learn more about how licking and grooming worked and what kind of effect it had on the pups. So they kept watching the rats, spending long days and nights with their faces pressed up against the Plexiglas, and after many weeks of careful observation, they made an additional discovery: different mother rats had different patterns of licking and grooming, even in the absence of their pups' being handled. So Meaney’s team undertook a new experiment, with a new set of dams, to try to quantify these patterns. This time, they didn’t handle any of the pups. They just closely observed each cage, an hour at a time, eight sessions a day, for the first ten days of the pups' lives. Researchers counted every instance of maternal licking and grooming. And after ten days, they divided the dams into two categories: the ones that licked and groomed a lot, which they labeled high LG, and the ones that licked and groomed a little, which they labeled low LG. ... The researchers ran test after test, and on each one, the high-LG offspring excelled: They were better at mazes. They were more social. They were more curious. They were less aggressive. They had more self-control. They were healthier. They lived longer. Meaney and his researchers were astounded. What seemed like a tiny variation in early mothering style, so small that decades of researchers hadn’t noticed it, created huge behavioral differences in mature rats, months after the licking and grooming had taken place. And the effect wasn't just behavioral; it was biological too. When Meaney’s researchers examined the brains of the adult rats, they found significant differences in the stress-response systems of the high—LG and low-LG rats, including big variations in the size and shape and complexity of the parts of the brain that regulated stress." [1] http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-Character/dp/1452658145 http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-Charact...
Hitton 7y ago
It would be interesting to know if there is any connection to PTSD. I think that rapidly created connections between different brain regions could be plausible explanation.
trykondev 7y ago
I've been thinking lately about the line between feeling "stimulated" and feeling "stressed" by intellectual work. I certainly crave challenging problems but I feel sometimes like that inherently brushes up against stress -- thinking hard about a problem and hitting frustrating roadblocks along the way is more stressful than laying on the beach, but also to me feels much more meaningful. I worry if the type of person who seeks out stimulating work and having that become a source of stress is risking damaging their health in the longer term -- I always vaguely assumed thinking hard about problems was a net positive for my brain & would keep me mentally active, but perhaps it's worth thinking about finding ways to keep doing this kind of work and at the same time minimizing the impact of the stress it causes. Maybe aiming to work only when feeling well-rested, or working without deadlines could be things to consider along these lines -- I don't really have a central thesis or solution to stress-free & stimulating work, but these kinds of ideas have been on my mind.
- mettamage 7y ago
  I thought quite a bit on the topic of craving and frustration. I wrote an article about it that I could email to you if you would like. And I learned a thing or two about stress when I studied psychology. Here are my thoughts (without sources and a bit worse editing as I am on my phone). > I certainly crave challenging problems. When crave something I always wonder how it is different vs a cocaine addict craving cocaine. I crave mental stimulation as well, so here are my observations: 1. Psychological addiction is possible. 2. Craving too much mental stimulation could weaken your social ties depending on how you seek it out. 3. You become intellectually sharper at whatever it is you’re stimulated by but in almost all cases not sharper in other areas, even when skills are transferable (unless the areas are really close). 4. As almost always, following a chronic crave does not make you happier. Like scratching an itch doesn’t make you happier. Being frustrated is not an issue in my opinion. Frustration results from not achieving your goal while you believe you should still be able to progress but somehow you don’t. There is no stress there as you can simply do something else. Take the option of doing something else away and then you do have stress (e.g. this wasn’t a frustrating hobby problem in your free time but a problem on your job that is making your company lose $10k per hour). > I worry if the type of person who seeks out stimulating work and having that become a source of stress is risking damaging their health in the longer term Only if it is chronic. Read about the HPA axis. It proposes a biological explanation for depression through stress. Also, burnout is symptomatically very similar to depression (I am on mobile cannot find the source now, but any decent search engine can help). > I always vaguely assumed thinking hard about problems was a net positive for my brain & would keep me mentally active In this particular case the exercise analogy works. If you do anything physical (or mental) that is beyond your capacity or stamina but you somehow are forced to go through with it, then you will experience stress. In closing only chronic stress is a bad thing since we can recuperate from temporary stress. Aka we simply need the ability to rest and the ability to recover. On a short-term basis, stress is a good motivator to some. Related to all of this (in an unusual way) is the self-determination theory of motivation. What you may see here is that in my examples people have little to no autonomy and that results in stress.
want2know 7y ago
Some time ago I had a long period of intense stress. It is amazing how much it changes your mind and body. Muscles contract causing all kinds of insuline problems, your hormones become a mess, and all this is raising stress levels more because you don't know what is going on in your body. And then an anxiety disorder is right around the corner. And when everything is ok again your brain produces stress hormones when you hear a sound that would trigger you earlier or just a smell or a color. I think this is the most difficult part to get back to normal: The brain brings you in stress mode for no obvious reason. Then you have to reason about it so the stress goes away and you will slowly reset your brain. But I doubt the paths in the brain will ever go away. It will be like a overgrown path in the end but it is still there.
- sjg007 7y ago
  This is kind of what CBT and also exposure therapy is about.. recognizing the pathway and then providing an alternate resolution. At some point you should be able to reduce the stress response to specific triggers to a distant memory. You can certainly treat a phobia and anxiety this way.
- hef19898 7y ago
  The worst thng about that, at least for me, was that I actually liked it. I felt alert, productive, full of energy. Things moved gast and I felt on top of them, it was just great. When things changed, arguably forvthe better, I kind of wanted the previous status back. Took me quite a while to cool down again, yet I still prefer high pressure high speed environments. Funn thing is, my body felt good too. I was healthy as check ups showned. I even managed to trian more than today. Strange period that was indeed...
  - sjg007 7y ago
    Where there any negative consequences?
    - hef19898 7y ago
      Physically and medically, no, thank god. Personality wise, well, let's say my acquired habbit of pushing for a better solution constantly and focus on efficiency didn't sit well with a lot of people. But it's getting better now, still struggling to be as patient as I, somtimes pretending, am now two years later.
FailMore 7y ago
The article mentions that they hope that this will be useful when understanding 'pathological hyperactivity of the noradrenaline system, which is associated with anxiety and panic disorders'. For those interested, I wrote a paper on how the fall of Norepinephrine during REM dreaming can help diagnose the precise way to reduce this stress: https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz Worked for me.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dr_dshiv 7y ago
There are some important dimensions of stress that often get lumped together in a way that can be misleading. First, there is good and bad stress -- eustress and distress. Second, there is acute and chronic stress. This study addresses acute distress -- like a car accident. As they say, it is hard to produce this in a lab study (for ethical reasons, one supposes).
- draw_down 7y ago
  Nobody is fretting about “the good kind” of stress, doesn’t really seem like a useful distinction here
ajt49 7y ago
This is really interesting in terms of such an acute chemical change causing such a systemic alteration in connectivity. I can imagine if you are under stressful conditions constantly you can't truly function as these changes are constantly occurring. You could see how this would lead to ptsd, depression, other neurological conditions.
jstrickshire 7y ago
I believe that stress does cause a tremendous amount of damage to the brain. I'm glad to see others share the same ideas. It may not be proven whether damage is permanent or not. But it's not something that can be left alone.
La-ang 7y ago
Am I the only one relating this to PUBG, and that moment when you're low on health, with a torn police vest, 30 bullets left in AKM, no compensator, no meds and a whole squad taking the stairs up to come rip you apart?
blackflame7000 7y ago
> "However, it is not possible to directly examine this theory in people, because noradrenaline release cannot be selectively manipulated." This is exactly what ADHD medication like Vyvanse or Adderall does.
osrec 7y ago
Stress is such a stupid thing. Here in London, you're almost celebrated for having a stressful job. Neither does it improve productivity in the long term, nor does it support a healthy life. I wished more managers would understand that.
_bxg1 7y ago
How I feel when reading an article about how bad stress is for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr9DI3YLOTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr9DI3YLOTA

331 points by laurex 7y ago

ezxs 7y ago

To someone who is not a neuroscientist, what does this do? Yes the regions are rewired, but aren't they rewired all the time anyway?

sidcool 7y ago
They may not be rewired in a helpful way.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
From the intro of this article: Activity in the amygdala and networks that process sensory stimuli increased. The amygdala is a part of the brain that will dictate reactions to crisis before you can consciously process it. It's called "amygdala hijack" and is responsible for people doing things like leaping into a river to save a drowning child before they fully register the child consciously, so they find themselves in a river going "Why the hell am I here?" and then realize there's a child drowning in front of them. This is potentially dangerous. Vietnam vets and others with PTSD sometimes strongly overreact to stimuli that aren't actually a signal of a problem. For example, waking a Vietnam vet can get you assaulted before they realize you aren't a danger to them, sort of like that scene where Wolverine skewers Rogue because she wakes him from a nightmare, though usually not that dramatic. (I have heard of people winding up in the ER though.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack From an article written for lay people Chronic Stress Increases the Risk of Mental Illness Stress Changes the Brain's Structure. Stress Kills Brain Cells. Stress Shrinks the Brain. Etc. https://www.verywellmind.com/surprising-ways-that-stress-affects-your-brain-2795040 https://www.verywellmind.com/surprising-ways-that-stress-aff...
ubu7737 7y ago
I suspect that in cases of moderate stress this mechanism is adaptive. And in extreme cases it is catastrophic.

garbre 7y ago

So they stimulated norepinephrine release in rats in an fMRI machine and they found it increased "activity" in sensory processing and the amygdala. Presumably it would increase "activity" in "higher" regions of the brain, except those only exist to a limited extent in rats. For most humans, the question about stress is, "what is the effect of chronic stress?" which this paper did not answer. I'm sure it was still a good study, largely because it's demonstrating concrete mechanisms for things we think are happening anyway, but I can't confirm that because it's behind a paywall, like most publicly-funded research.

kranner 7y ago
Preprint PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Johannes_Bohacek/publication/330604048_Rapid_Reconfiguration_of_the_Functional_Connectome_after_Chemogenetic_Locus_Coeruleus_Activation/links/5c4eab73a6fdccd6b5cecb0c/Rapid-Reconfiguration-of-the-Functional-Connectome-after-Chemogenetic-Locus-Coeruleus-Activation.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Johannes_Bohacek/public...

ctack 7y ago

Am busy doing the Win Hof method. From what I understand, norepinephrine and particularly epinephrine release are desired goals of the cold exposure part his method as they suppress release of pro inflammatory cytokines.

roel_v 7y ago
*Wim, for those who might want to google.
- ctack 7y ago
  Auto correct playing it’s vital part ;) Thank-you

mlurp 7y ago

Professor Sapolsky has talked about this in a somewhat different context as well, about what it does during childhood development. Really tragic actually.

leoh 7y ago
Any links?
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Playlist: Sapolsky and stress https://www.invidio.us/playlist?list=PLY5d5qxwc2vvad_lbulFmoR4XfZMz_3SG https://www.invidio.us/playlist?list=PLY5d5qxwc2vvad_lbulFmo...
- knbknb 7y ago
  The Great Courses has a non-free 24 * 30 min Coure "Stress and the Brain" given by Sapolsky .
vmurthy 7y ago
Don't forget his book "Why Zebras don't get ulcers" [0] [0]https://www.amazon.in/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Stress-Related-ebook/dp/B0037NX018/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= https://www.amazon.in/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Stress-Related-...
eee_honda 7y ago
re: childhood development - Arguably the more interesting work on this is how particularly intense acute periods of stress that would register as "trauma" predispositions an individual to things like much higher rates of ischemic heart failure, diabetes, and other health conditions that we might not typically relate to trauma. Then there's all the standard stuff you might expect, emotional dysregulation into adulthood, drug and alcohol abuse, suicidal behaviour, etc. See Dr. Vincent Felitti's Adverse Childhood Experience studies for more info.

fyfy18 7y ago

Is the summary accurate? It says "A new study sheds light on how the brain changes as a result of chronic stress", but the rest of the article only mentions acute stress.

alok-g 7y ago
+1 It's not uncommon to see such basic flaws or misinterpretations in various articles.

mkagenius 7y ago

My body also changes due to stress. I get rashes on my hand if I get stressed for more than 2 days at a stretch.

ductionist 7y ago
If you don’t mind sharing - what kind of rashes?
- Tempest1981 7y ago
  From https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317631.php https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317631.php "It is also possible for emotional stress to trigger an outbreak of hives. There can be a number of hormonal or chemical changes that occur in response to stress. These changes can trigger blood vessels to expand and leak, causing red and swollen patches of skin."
  - cynicalreason 7y ago
    yeap .. I see this in myself occasionally and so far they seem to coincide with periods of stress
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > It is also possible for emotional stress to trigger an outbreak of hives. No doubt, stress has physiological effects, but so does laughter and excitement. Having stress is a normal part of being a human. In reasonable doses it's fine.
    - arethuza 7y ago
      I've always found it ironic that one of the best antidotes for day to day stress is to be in a situation where you get "stressed" in a completely different way... (the main factor in the 'positive' stress situations for me being in fairly complete control, confidence in your own abilities and requirement to focus on the matter in hand for a few hours).

rzzzt 7y ago

It would be helpful to tag articles about animal model studies and early stage drug trials on HN, similar to [pdf] and [video] content; would tone down the clickbait/sensationalism levels without the need to modify the submission title.

e1g 7y ago
Like this novelty Twitter account https://mobile.twitter.com/justsaysinmice https://mobile.twitter.com/justsaysinmice which points out hilarity of sensational headlines that are based on distant experiments on mice.
- rzzzt 7y ago
  Indeed, seeing it mentioned in another article was one of the inspirations for my comment. On another note, does anyone know how they actually perform (f)MRI on mice?

red0point 7y ago

Original Source: https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2019/07/what-stress-does-to-the-brain.html https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2019/07/wha...

MarkMc 7y ago

Paul Tough's book, "How Children Succeed" [1] has a great section on how mother rats (called dams) can significantly counteract the stress of their offspring (called pups): "Scientists in rat labs are always picking up baby rats to examine them or weigh them, and one day about ten years ago, researchers in Meaney’s lab noticed a curious thing: When they put the pups back in the cages after handling them, some dams would scurry over and spend a few minutes licking and grooming their pups. Others would just ignore them. When the researchers examined the rat pups, they discovered that this seemingly insignificant practice had a distinct physiological effect. When a lab assistant handled a rat pup, researchers found, it produced anxiety, a flood of stress hormones, in the pup. The dam’s licking and grooming counteracted that anxiety and calmed down that surge of hormones. Meaney and his researchers were intrigued, and they wanted to learn more about how licking and grooming worked and what kind of effect it had on the pups. So they kept watching the rats, spending long days and nights with their faces pressed up against the Plexiglas, and after many weeks of careful observation, they made an additional discovery: different mother rats had different patterns of licking and grooming, even in the absence of their pups' being handled. So Meaney’s team undertook a new experiment, with a new set of dams, to try to quantify these patterns. This time, they didn’t handle any of the pups. They just closely observed each cage, an hour at a time, eight sessions a day, for the first ten days of the pups' lives. Researchers counted every instance of maternal licking and grooming. And after ten days, they divided the dams into two categories: the ones that licked and groomed a lot, which they labeled high LG, and the ones that licked and groomed a little, which they labeled low LG. ... The researchers ran test after test, and on each one, the high-LG offspring excelled: They were better at mazes. They were more social. They were more curious. They were less aggressive. They had more self-control. They were healthier. They lived longer. Meaney and his researchers were astounded. What seemed like a tiny variation in early mothering style, so small that decades of researchers hadn’t noticed it, created huge behavioral differences in mature rats, months after the licking and grooming had taken place. And the effect wasn't just behavioral; it was biological too. When Meaney’s researchers examined the brains of the adult rats, they found significant differences in the stress-response systems of the high—LG and low-LG rats, including big variations in the size and shape and complexity of the parts of the brain that regulated stress." [1] http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-Character/dp/1452658145 http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-Charact...

Hitton 7y ago

It would be interesting to know if there is any connection to PTSD. I think that rapidly created connections between different brain regions could be plausible explanation.

trykondev 7y ago

I've been thinking lately about the line between feeling "stimulated" and feeling "stressed" by intellectual work. I certainly crave challenging problems but I feel sometimes like that inherently brushes up against stress -- thinking hard about a problem and hitting frustrating roadblocks along the way is more stressful than laying on the beach, but also to me feels much more meaningful. I worry if the type of person who seeks out stimulating work and having that become a source of stress is risking damaging their health in the longer term -- I always vaguely assumed thinking hard about problems was a net positive for my brain & would keep me mentally active, but perhaps it's worth thinking about finding ways to keep doing this kind of work and at the same time minimizing the impact of the stress it causes. Maybe aiming to work only when feeling well-rested, or working without deadlines could be things to consider along these lines -- I don't really have a central thesis or solution to stress-free & stimulating work, but these kinds of ideas have been on my mind.

mettamage 7y ago
I thought quite a bit on the topic of craving and frustration. I wrote an article about it that I could email to you if you would like. And I learned a thing or two about stress when I studied psychology. Here are my thoughts (without sources and a bit worse editing as I am on my phone). > I certainly crave challenging problems. When crave something I always wonder how it is different vs a cocaine addict craving cocaine. I crave mental stimulation as well, so here are my observations: 1. Psychological addiction is possible. 2. Craving too much mental stimulation could weaken your social ties depending on how you seek it out. 3. You become intellectually sharper at whatever it is you’re stimulated by but in almost all cases not sharper in other areas, even when skills are transferable (unless the areas are really close). 4. As almost always, following a chronic crave does not make you happier. Like scratching an itch doesn’t make you happier. Being frustrated is not an issue in my opinion. Frustration results from not achieving your goal while you believe you should still be able to progress but somehow you don’t. There is no stress there as you can simply do something else. Take the option of doing something else away and then you do have stress (e.g. this wasn’t a frustrating hobby problem in your free time but a problem on your job that is making your company lose $10k per hour). > I worry if the type of person who seeks out stimulating work and having that become a source of stress is risking damaging their health in the longer term Only if it is chronic. Read about the HPA axis. It proposes a biological explanation for depression through stress. Also, burnout is symptomatically very similar to depression (I am on mobile cannot find the source now, but any decent search engine can help). > I always vaguely assumed thinking hard about problems was a net positive for my brain & would keep me mentally active In this particular case the exercise analogy works. If you do anything physical (or mental) that is beyond your capacity or stamina but you somehow are forced to go through with it, then you will experience stress. In closing only chronic stress is a bad thing since we can recuperate from temporary stress. Aka we simply need the ability to rest and the ability to recover. On a short-term basis, stress is a good motivator to some. Related to all of this (in an unusual way) is the self-determination theory of motivation. What you may see here is that in my examples people have little to no autonomy and that results in stress.

want2know 7y ago

Some time ago I had a long period of intense stress. It is amazing how much it changes your mind and body. Muscles contract causing all kinds of insuline problems, your hormones become a mess, and all this is raising stress levels more because you don't know what is going on in your body. And then an anxiety disorder is right around the corner. And when everything is ok again your brain produces stress hormones when you hear a sound that would trigger you earlier or just a smell or a color. I think this is the most difficult part to get back to normal: The brain brings you in stress mode for no obvious reason. Then you have to reason about it so the stress goes away and you will slowly reset your brain. But I doubt the paths in the brain will ever go away. It will be like a overgrown path in the end but it is still there.

sjg007 7y ago
This is kind of what CBT and also exposure therapy is about.. recognizing the pathway and then providing an alternate resolution. At some point you should be able to reduce the stress response to specific triggers to a distant memory. You can certainly treat a phobia and anxiety this way.
hef19898 7y ago
The worst thng about that, at least for me, was that I actually liked it. I felt alert, productive, full of energy. Things moved gast and I felt on top of them, it was just great. When things changed, arguably forvthe better, I kind of wanted the previous status back. Took me quite a while to cool down again, yet I still prefer high pressure high speed environments. Funn thing is, my body felt good too. I was healthy as check ups showned. I even managed to trian more than today. Strange period that was indeed...
- sjg007 7y ago
  Where there any negative consequences?
  - hef19898 7y ago
    Physically and medically, no, thank god. Personality wise, well, let's say my acquired habbit of pushing for a better solution constantly and focus on efficiency didn't sit well with a lot of people. But it's getting better now, still struggling to be as patient as I, somtimes pretending, am now two years later.

FailMore 7y ago

The article mentions that they hope that this will be useful when understanding 'pathological hyperactivity of the noradrenaline system, which is associated with anxiety and panic disorders'. For those interested, I wrote a paper on how the fall of Norepinephrine during REM dreaming can help diagnose the precise way to reduce this stress: https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz Worked for me.

deleted 7y ago

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dr_dshiv 7y ago

There are some important dimensions of stress that often get lumped together in a way that can be misleading. First, there is good and bad stress -- eustress and distress. Second, there is acute and chronic stress. This study addresses acute distress -- like a car accident. As they say, it is hard to produce this in a lab study (for ethical reasons, one supposes).

draw_down 7y ago
Nobody is fretting about “the good kind” of stress, doesn’t really seem like a useful distinction here

ajt49 7y ago

This is really interesting in terms of such an acute chemical change causing such a systemic alteration in connectivity. I can imagine if you are under stressful conditions constantly you can't truly function as these changes are constantly occurring. You could see how this would lead to ptsd, depression, other neurological conditions.

jstrickshire 7y ago

I believe that stress does cause a tremendous amount of damage to the brain. I'm glad to see others share the same ideas. It may not be proven whether damage is permanent or not. But it's not something that can be left alone.

La-ang 7y ago

Am I the only one relating this to PUBG, and that moment when you're low on health, with a torn police vest, 30 bullets left in AKM, no compensator, no meds and a whole squad taking the stairs up to come rip you apart?

blackflame7000 7y ago

> "However, it is not possible to directly examine this theory in people, because noradrenaline release cannot be selectively manipulated." This is exactly what ADHD medication like Vyvanse or Adderall does.

osrec 7y ago

Stress is such a stupid thing. Here in London, you're almost celebrated for having a stressful job. Neither does it improve productivity in the long term, nor does it support a healthy life. I wished more managers would understand that.

_bxg1 7y ago

How I feel when reading an article about how bad stress is for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr9DI3YLOTA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr9DI3YLOTA