How did you spend your day when you were given a day off from your long working week or after finishing a project? Did you simply take that time to do nothing or make the most out of it? Research says the majority would choose the latter because who doesn’t like a mini getaway or a trip to nearby attractions with a late-night movie screening?
Time is generally associated with keeping ourselves engaged, whether it is unconscious scrolling of reels or investing in oneself as we feel like it. But there exists a twist: the display of being busy is seen as central to a worthy and productive self. So, if you think about your actions on a free day, they’re indeed shaped by broader social forces.
We as a generation have more time compared to previous generations, and yet we feel more pressured despite technological advancements that were meant for a more relaxed lifestyle in the first place, indicating a paradox!
This imbalance causes stress, and when you’re stressed, it triggers certain parts of your body called the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis. These are like the messengers in your body that tell it to prepare for something tough. As a response, your body releases substances like cortisol (the stress hormone) and glucocorticoids (traffic controller), which can directly affect the growth of certain types of cancer.
But that’s not all – stress also weakens your defense system. So, if there are any bad cells, they can chill as your body is taking a nap because it’s too stressed out. Otherwise, why do you think people fall sick more often when there is an important exam coming up?
Then, to add to your stress, stress can team up with other substances in your body called catecholamines (energy boosters), giving those bad cells a helping hand to grow and multiply, which is not good.
And finally, stress could mess with a process called apoptosis, which is like a self-destruct button for cells. If this doesn’t work correctly, some cells that should have been gone might cause trouble.
In a study conducted by MIT, researchers tried to identify whether stress changes the brain’s activity before encountering information, not just how it remembers it later. Normally, stress enhances your brain’s focus more on emotional stuff, helping you to remember better. They found that in non-stressed individuals, brain waves predicted good memory, no matter if the stuff was emotional or not. But in stressed people, different brain waves were at play, especially when the stuff was emotional, suggesting that stress shifts the brain’s readiness for memory formation. Basically, stress is like a movie director changing the script and the way scenes are shot in the movie of your memories.
So, what can we do? Probably understanding the context might help!
Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that controls the speed and scale at which new connections are made between neurons, and its release is controlled by another switch (nucleus basalis). This switch becomes active when one of the three conditions is met: a novel situation, a shock, or intense focus maintained through repetition.
So, in a nutshell, stress is one major guiding force, if not the only one, for accelerating infections, inducing malignancies and even hair loss, and impacting your learning capabilities.
References-
https://direct.mit.edu/jocn/article-abstract/32/12/2226/95501/Stress-Alters-the-Neural-Context-for-Building-New?redirectedFrom=fulltext
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0961463X18769786
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41290172
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