Abby Tang: How are you feeling?
Graham Flanagan: I literally played that song,
♪ You had a bad day ♪
Alex Appolonia: I wrote down some points
because my brain is like mush lately.
Fran Lam: Sad,
worried,
stressed.
Victoria Barranco: Physically, like all of
the negative emotions.
Abby: This probably sounds super familiar,
and that's because a lot of us
are feeling stressed right now.
But this isn't normal stress.
This is pandemic stress,
and it is messing with our brains in a very specific way.
When you get stressed, it triggers a chain reaction
that starts in the amygdala,
your emotional-processing headquarters.
Your eyes and ears send info to the amygdala,
and it determines if what you're seeing
and hearing is stressful.
If it is, it sends a signal
to your command center, the hypothalamus.
It's in charge of getting the word out
to the rest of your body
by way of the autonomic nervous system.
The adrenal glands get the message first
and pump adrenaline into your bloodstream.
Your heart beats faster;
you breathe more rapidly
because your muscles need extra blood
and your brain needs extra oxygen.
They're preparing to react to whatever threat
is causing your stress response.
All of this happens in the blink of an eye.
It's like how people can jump out of the way of a car
without really thinking about it.
The emotional amygdala
basically overrides your prefrontal cortex,
the part of your brain where all the logic happens.
So you don't get a chance to think things through;
you just react.
Once the threat dies down, though,
the parasympathetic nervous system takes over
and returns all those heightened reactions to normal.
But if the brain still detects danger
after the initial adrenaline rush,
the hypothalamus sends out another message
to the rest of the HPA axis.
This triggers another series of hormones
that lead to the release of cortisol,
which signals to the body that it needs
to stay on high alert and keep pumping out stress hormones.
Right now for a lot of us,
that threat is still very much alive.
The amygdala is still overriding the prefrontal cortex,
which is in charge of decision making and planning.
So those feelings of forgetfulness and tiredness,
they're likely a product of this stress response
that won't turn off.
Stress hormones and the accompanying bodily responses
are super helpful in the short term,
but our bodies aren't meant to function in this
heightened state for weeks or months at a time.
And over time, your brain will burn out.
When it does, it can lead to something
called allostatic load,
the cumulative wear and tear that happens to your body
when you're dealing with chronic stress.
A high, prolonged level of cortisol
can mess with a lot of stuff.
It's even been seen to decrease the volume
of your hippocampus,
the area responsible for learning and memory,
and a reduced hippocampus is more often seen in people
with depression than those without.
So all this is to say that
the extra stress is probably not doing
your brain or your body any favors.
And humans are historically really bad at making decisions
when they don't know what's going to happen.
So, what can you do to reduce allostatic load?
Reduce stress.
Eating well, exercising,
and maintaining a regular sleep schedule
cannot be overlooked.
Exercising alone can reduce stress hormones,
even with just a 20-minute walk.
And a different way of thinking could also help us:
an idea called model-free learning.
It's basically trial and error.
Instead of basing your risk assessment
on similar examples from the past
or envisioning future scenarios,
you just take it one step at a time.
This way, you reassess and update your own estimate
of what's happening and how to prepare.
We're dealing with a new virus,
constantly changing policies,
and likely a completely different schedule
and maybe even environment.
Our brain is on high alert at all times
to identify potential threats.
Which means that even if you're spending
most of your time laying around,
your brain isn't,
so try not to beat yourself up
for feeling tired or fuzzy or unmotivated.
You just don't need anything else to stress about.
Now that you know all of this,
how are you feeling?
Alex: To be honest, I do still feel the same.
Fran: I think I'm feeling a bit better after watching it.
Victoria: It's actually my body is exhausted
from feeling things and being under stress
all day, all the time.
Graham: Whenever I feel that allostatic load
starting to weigh down on me,
you know, I can put a name on it, a face on it,
and it makes it a lot easier to deal with it.