Interested in the neuro-biology of how you can become more resilient to stress? Listen in.

Episode 032:

Get in touch if you want some citations to the research that went into this episode - I'd be happy to send out the citations. As a great, readable reference, check out 'The Hour Between Dog and Wolf' - it's a great look into the neurology of risk.

Music by Big Rain courtesy of Mevio's Music Alley.

032 | Stress Mastery through Adventure

Have you ever climbed or shredded on mountain bikes with those people who - by some act of ultimate willpower and control - never bat an eye at stuff that makes you wish you had worn your brown pants that day?

I have encountered a lot of those people. And I always wanted to figure it out - what the Hell is their secret? Are they born with a genetically-predisposed aptitude for risk? With the ability to calmly handle anything you throw their way?

The recent research suggests that while we can indeed be born with a wide range of reactivities to dangerous situations (I talked about this last episode, What adventures are you wired for?), we also have the ability to develop mental toughness through practice and lifestyle design. Surprisingly, developing it may even help us to live longer, healthier lives.

Stress. Quick - what does the word make you think of first? Work? Drudgery? Relationships? Heart attacks? (yes, it has come to my attention that heart attacks are caused by stress potentially as much as by dietary factors.) Ughhh. Stress can be a good thing - it can help us grow. But today, it seems that the word is only associated with the long-term, catabolic and insidious stress we find in so many modern workplaces.

Last week we talked about resilience, both personal and societal. How can we as individuals and as a community learn to respond to unwanted change in a way that allows us to continue living our core purposes?

I mentioned that we would do a couple of episodes really diving into some of the science behind how to develop resilience and live a stoked life. This is one of those. What happens to us, biologically, when we are stressed? How is it that stress causes heart attacks? How can we learn to mitigate the stress response in our bodies to live healthier, longer, more productive, more awesome lives?

Let’s break into it.

When someone says ‘I’m stressed,’ what they are referring to is a set of conditions in their body that came on in response to some external or internal stimulus. Perhaps their company is laying folks off left and right, and they fear they may be next.
 The set of conditions that they are feeling in their body are a totally normal response to threats. If we go back to how we, as humans, evolved, lay-off’s weren’t a huge concern for cave men. Instead, a bear or lion might have been our biggest concern, or a rival tribe. These stimuli would require a great physical effort, so the stress response evolved to cause a rapid shift away from the state of everyday affairs in our bodies and brains to a state of emergency, allowing us to run or fight for our lives. Cool stuff - and it saved our asses out there on the plains. In the workplace though? Well, let’s get to that in a minute.

The stress response in the human body occurs in four stages - the last stage being the differentiator between ‘good stress,’ or eustress, and ‘bad stress’ that makes us weaker rather than stronger.

The first two stages involve electrical signals and are thus extremely fast. First, a small portion of the brain called the amygdala must register the stimuli (‘that’s a bear!’) and assign it emotional significance (‘I don’t like bears because they are dangerous’) before sending it out to other regions of the brain. This process takes milliseconds.

The second step is for the message to be sent to the body’s visceral organs - the heart increases it’s rate, pumping more blood and increasing blood pressure in case we have to sprint away. The extra blood is sent towards major muscle groups in our thighs and arms. At the same time, blood vessels in the stomach constrict, stopping digestion since there is no need for it lest the lion actually catch us. The blood shunted away from the stomach can result in the feeling of butterflies. Tiny arteries in the skin also constrict causing the skin to be clammy and pale - if the skin was lacerated in the fight this would help to slow bleeding. The skin sweats even in anticipation of physical exertion while water is conserved by stoping salivation, resulting in a dry mouth.

All of this occurs in less than a second and can prove extremely useful in getting away or fighting a threat; the downside, though, is it takes a TON of energy. There needs to be a way to fuel the process for a longer amount of time, and this is where step three comes into play.

The third step in the stress response is no longer electrical - it is chemical, which means it takes much longer for it to occur - on the order of seconds to minutes. The chemicals enter the body in the form of hormones like epinephrine (adrenaline) and sustain the focused attention and energy in the body.

The fourth and final stage in the stress response involves threats that last longer than a simple fight-or-flight situation. To deal with this sort of a sustained effort, the body secretes increasing amounts of “the big gun” of stress response - cortisol.

Cortisol is a catabolic hormone - it is capable of breaking down energy stores in our body so that we can use them immediately by blocking the effects of insulin and turning fat and muscle cells into free fatty acids and amino acids, which typically get sent to the liver to be converted into glucose so that our body can get immediate energy. It inhibits digestive enzymes to further slow digestion, and it inhibits the production of growth hormone (which can actually stunt the growth of young adults exposed to stress). Similarly, it blocks the effects of testosterone and suppresses the reproductive tract. Finally, cortisol is an incredibly powerful anti-inflammatory which, in combination with endorphins released can dull pain.

As a result, cortisol is capable of producing invigorating effects on the longer scale of minutes to hours... or even days. And this is where the problem lies - the effects of cortisol are capable of saving us from quite a bit of danger in the short term, but sustain the effects of cortisol for too long and let it reach too high of levels, and we may as well guarantee our long-term demise.

Unfortunately, our bodies treat threats in the form of a fight and in the form of workplace stresses the same. Ever gotten butterflies and sweaty palms before giving a speech? Even more unfortunate is that workplace stress tends to always be long-term.

So let’s talk about some of the effects of chronic exposure to cortisol, and then we will finish up with some of the current research on ways to become resilient to stress.

Cortisol has been shown to effect memory and thinking - remember our discussion of the amygdala - the part of the brain that gives emotional meaning to things? Cortisol can help to imprint and store memories of threatening stimuli in the amygdala, which allows those memories to be called upon in other times of th...