I’ve posted earlier about how harmful stress can be for your brain and body. Recently came across some very helpful info on the NIH website that sheds additional light on your body’s stress response:

Research indicates that there is one major factor that helps determine whether or not stress will be biologically harmful:

• Perception of Control

In other words, if you feel you have control over a situation, the stress associated with it will not be nearly as harmful to your brain and body.

If you feel you have very little control, then that’s when stress becomes toxic.

Newer research identifies this ‘circuitry of resilience’ as the prefrontal cortex suppressing mood-regulating cells in the brainstem alarm centers.

NIMH Director Thomas Insel, M.D. adds:

Lack of control over stressful life experiences has been implicated in mood and anxiety disorders

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In an earlier post, I mentioned how a large amount of new research shows that chronic stress plays a major role in destroying the memory engine (hippocampus) of your brain.

Additionally, I’ve also pointed out how many studies now implicate stress as playing a major role in:

• Diabetes
• Atherosclerosis (which leads to heart attacks and strokes)
• Cancer

Now new studies suggest it actually causes premature aging of your immune system. From a recent article in Forbes:

Research suggests that stress can shorten the chunks of DNA at the tips of chromosomes in cells, making it harder for them to work properly, according to the Elissa Epel, a psychologist at the University of California at San Francisco. The bits of DNA “are like the plastic caps on the ends of our shoelaces. They prevent the ends from fraying,” she said.

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