Stress makes you stupid, but how does that work? Coming right up
Hi I am Dr. Sten Ekberg with Wellness For Life and if you'd like to truly master health
by understanding how the body really works make sure that you subscribe and
hit that notification bell so that you don't miss anything. So most people have
probably noticed at some point in their life that when they're stressed they
just don't perform the way they usually do some examples would be if you freeze
up because someone's really rude to you and you're just steaming with fury and
you just wish that you could tell them off just the right way but nothing comes
to mind and then an hour later you think of all those clever things that you
should have told them right or if you are nervous if let's say you're afraid
of public speaking you're really uncomfortable and you get up there and
you feel like a deer-in-the-headlight and you just freeze you're tongue-tied
can't think of a single thing to say so in both of those cases it's a form of
stress that makes you stupid your body changes priorities in those
cases so what's happening is stress is the same thing as a fight/flight
activation of your nervous system your nervous system has two branches is
called a sympathetic fight/flight or the feed breed which is parasympathetic and
whenever you have stress you're activating that sympathetic or the
fight/flight portion and then something happens in the body so this is a an old
response that's in place in your body so that you can survive emergencies so if
an animal comes to you to eat you whether it's a saber-toothed tiger or a
grizzly bear or a Mack truck in modern day you got to be able to act quickly
and your body reprioritize --is and in those moments your heart rate increases
your blood pressure increases your muscle tension increases you can quickly
act and get out of there so let's look at the brain and how that all fits
together so the frontal lobe of the brain is
where your cognitive function the things that make us uniquely human our
intellect our ability for abstract thought our ability to be discerning our
ability for motivation and planning to staying focused all of those are
functions of the frontal lobe so during a fight flight response when there's a
truck coming at you you don't have to be creative you don't have to analyze a
bunch of stuff you just have to get out of the way so you don't really need the
frontal lobe you just need instincts you need basic pre-programmed responses if
you will and those are taken care of for you by your brainstem there's three
portions to the brainstem it's the midbrain the pons and the
medulla and all these they regulate your autonomic nervous system they manage
things for you so you don't have to think
so this is where instinct sits this is where instinct comes from so that you're
able to raise your blood pressure tighten your muscles and get out of the
way quickly because you don't have time to analyze a bunch of stuff so what
happens in a stressful situation is your body reprioritize it says in this moment
we don't need to be really clever and thoughtful and analytical we just need
to act so the blood is reprioritize the blood flow is what carries the oxygen
and the resources for the brain to do what it does so it says we don't need
this right now so it reduces the blood flow to the frontal lobe to the thinking
portion and it increases the blood flow to the brain stem so that we can act
quickly so that's great when it's a wild animal but it's not so great if we get
stressed in other situations where we'd like to be functional but there's a fine
line also because sometimes if we're really really relaxed and lethargic on
we don't really perform that well so there is a different scale of brain
frequencies and when we freeze when we sort of get tongue-tied then we're in
high beta we're trying to get something done it's kind of frantic but nothing's
happening that that's indicative of high beta in
beta and SMR is when we perform the best this is when we have to do some action
we have to interact we have to talk like what I'm doing now is primarily in beta
and SMR I'm not really nervous but I'm focused trying to get the message across
I can't be lethargic and if you're having a speech if you in a business
meeting you want to be calm and confident and productive and this is in
beta and SMR so a little bit of nervousness a little bit of sympathetic
drive can be a plus it can make it perform better but then there is the
other end of the spectrum where we have creativity and insight if you've been
mulling over a problem and then in the morning when you wake up or at night
when you fall asleep or when you're just sort of shifting out a dream state then
it just comes to you that's inside that spontaneous insight and most creative
people most innovators most scientists they can attest to the fact that most
insight comes in a state where you're not really paying attention where you
really really relaxed almost drowsy almost just coming out of sleep and
that's right between theta and alpha those are slower frequencies alpha is
associated with relaxed learning and meditation theta is associated with
shifting into dream state so in these frequencies when the
sympathetic is completely offline or virtually completely offline that's when
we have these creativity's and insights high stress we tend to freeze
and yet nothing done a little bit of stress we tend to perform the best but
true creativity and insight which again is associated with frontal lobe comes
when we are the most relaxed so that's why stress makes you stupid because
stress reprioritize --is it says thinking isn't really important when you
have too much to act on in this moment please share this video with many people
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information on so for today thanks for listening