Written by Lindsey Byrne, The Cognitive Health Coach
Lindsey Byrne helps people to improve brain health and memory and prevent dementia. She is a Functional Medicine Certified Health Coach (FMCHC) and Certified Re:CODE 2.0 Health Coach. She is the author of What did I come in here for again? How I improved my brain health and memory with the Bredesen Protocol, published June 2024
Do you feel like you’re just not as sharp as you used to be? Are you finding that you have to write down things that you used to recall with ease? Or is it taking longer to process complex information? Maybe you don’t think that you’re overly stressed, you’re used to the deadlines, the office politics and the ever-increasing workload, but something is affecting your memory or processing speed. Could it be a build-up of chronic stress?
What is chronic stress?
According to Healthline: The difference between acute and chronic stress, “Acute stress is the stress you feel as the direct result of a specific situation or event…
Chronic stress is the result of stress that builds up from repeated exposure to stressful situations and the hormones your body releases during each stressful episode”.
Acute stress is helpful, it’s the body’s reaction to a life-threatening situation, it pumps hormones around the body making us hyper-focussed, our hearts pump faster, increasing our breathing rate, to help us fight or run away. The hormones are burned away during the fight or flight and we return to normal. But in the office, there are few life-threatening situations! Society has evolved, but our physiology has not. If this response occurs at a low level, every day because of less supportive work environments, difficulties at home or overloaded work schedules, we have no opportunity to burn off the excess hormones and return to normal, instead, everything just builds up and up.
Symptoms of chronic stress?
Yale medicine: Chronic stress symptoms lists 9 symptoms to watch out for
Unfocused or cloudy thinking
Aches and pains
Insomnia or sleepiness
A change in social behavior, such as staying in often
Low energy
Change in appetite
Increased alcohol or drug use
Change in emotional responses to others
Emotional withdrawal
If you’ve been feeling tired all the time and self-medicating with a glass of wine or two after work and would describe yourself as feeling some “brain fog” maybe now is the time to make a change.
What are the long-term effects of stress on the brain?
In a Paper by Girotti et al 2017, it was shown that, “Atrophy of brain regions, resulting from repeated exposure to stressful conditions, has a cognitive cost. Indeed, working memory, attention, response inhibition and cognitive flexibility have all been found to be impaired by stress”. In the longer term, according to Alzheimers.org.uk: can stress cause dementia? it is thought by some researchers to “have a direct impact on some of the mechanisms underlying dementia”
10 tips to overcome stress and improve your memory
1. Take some deep breaths
It’s probably the most obvious and simple solution, but there is a lot of science to back up how it works. Better Health: breathing to reduce stress tells us that “Deliberately copying a relaxed breathing pattern seems to calm the nervous system that controls the body's involuntary functions”. Try taking 4 slow deep breaths. Count during the in-breath, hold for a second or two, then let your breath out for a longer count than the in-breath count. Deep breathing means breathing deep into your gut. You should see or feel your tummy move more than your chest. One reason this works is that in deep breathing, the diaphragm massages the vagus nerve, running from your brain to your gut. When stimulated the vagus nerve promotes rest and digest mode (the opposite of fight or flight)
2. Move
Many people have a negative reaction to the word “exercise”, but moving gives us the chance to burn off stress hormones and also pumps up endorphins, the brain’s natural “feel good” neurotransmitters. Think about any movement you liked in the past and see how it would feel to start again. Maybe you enjoyed swimming as a child or loved dancing in your youth.
3. Sleep
That’s easy to say; if you’re stressed, you’re probably not sleeping well; lying in bed unable to get to sleep or after waking in the night, your stress levels can rise simply because you’re thinking about how long you have left to sleep and how you’ll feel if you don’t fall to sleep. Try some night-time sleep hygiene routines:
a. Stop using technology (blue light screens) for an hour or more before bed
b. Do something relaxing, read, write in a journal (positive reflections or ‘gratitudes’ might help you most) or pamper yourself.
c. Take a warm bath. When we go to sleep our bodies cool, so warming up before bed and then naturally cooling down tells our body to go to sleep.
d. If you wake in the night, don’t worry, everyone does. But if you find you can’t get back to sleep, get up so that you don’t start associating the bedroom with insomnia, go somewhere warm, do something tiring, for example, reading and then, re-do your bedtime routine. If you usually wash your face and brush your teeth, then do that again. You may be able to trick your brain into thinking it’s bedtime all over again.
e. Get into full sunlight as soon as you can after waking in the morning or get a SAD lamp to sit in front of. Bright light first thing in the morning can help reset your rhythms and rewire your brain to understand when is sleep time and when is waking time.
4. Practice mindfulness or meditation
If you’re anything like me, you probably eat quite quickly and try to do other things at the same time. Try slowing down; eating mindfully; focusing on the food, the taste and the texture and giving yourself time for a lunch break. You might also want to try a guided mindful meditation app. Head Space and Balance are two that give a free trial. It will take 4-6 weeks to see the benefits, so don’t give up before you’ve given it a chance.
5. Eat a healthy diet
What is healthy? So many food products make health claims on their packaging. Those claims always make me suspicious. Really healthy food doesn’t come with a barcode! Try to aim for ½ - ¾ of your plate to be a wide range of different colored vegetables. Each different color means you’re getting different nutrients. Get enough protein. And focus on adding brain-healthy fats: extra virgin olive oil, avocados, nuts and seeds.
6. Have fun
When we’re stressed, having fun might be the last thing on our minds. We’re already overloaded with work and sitting at our desks plowing through it might seem like the only way forward, leaving us with no energy for recreation after work. Can we reframe it as an energy bank account? Every time you have fun, you’re depositing energy that you can draw down in busy times.
7. Ask for help
If someone told you they were struggling and asked for some help, would you help them? Or would you see them in some way as less? If you’d help them, acknowledge that we all need help now and then, but if you’re not treating yourself with the same kindness, ask yourself why.
8. Eat the frog
We all procrastinate sometimes with difficult, uncomfortable or huge tasks that we’re not sure how to start. But think back, when you put things off in the past, how did you feel all day with it hanging over you? How did you feel after you’d finished the task? If you have to eat a frog, eat it first thing and then the rest of the day is much more pleasurable. If you have to eat a frog every day, do it first thing every day. If you have to eat more than one frog, eat the biggest, ugliest one first; even if you only take one step at a time. When I was recently writing a book, it took me a while to get started. Then I stared at a blank page for a while. Then I decided to just write the title page and the contents page, once I’d started, setting small goals for each day, it felt so much more do-able.
9. Take a break
Our bodies work on ultradian rhythms. They’re similar to the more familiar circadian rhythms of our sleep, but during the day. We can focus intensely for about 90 minutes, then we need a break or else we lose productivity. It can feel really difficult to take a break when we’re busy, especially if others are not taking a break. Your break doesn’t have to be a coffee break. Maybe just get up and stretch your legs. Go and talk to someone rather than emailing or phoning them. Or do something mindless like filing for a few minutes. Or fetch coffee for everyone. People will appreciate that, even more if they’re busy too.
10. 3-3-3
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it might help to break the train of thought or break that “stuck” feeling, with a trick to distract the mind. Take a moment, look for any 3 objects around you. Really look at them; notice the colors, shapes, light and shade. Then listen for 3 sounds, can you tell what’s making them? Get curious about the sounds, are they high or low in pitch, constant, rhythmic or random, are they pleasing or not? Then move 3 body parts. Notice the movement, is it smooth or jerky, loose or stiff, feel the muscle contract and stretch. This break can be enough to help you to calm yourself and to gain perspective on whatever is currently overwhelming you.
Take one small step towards a healthy brain today
Working on your brain health and memory might feel like an undefined task, but you don’t have to struggle with “what is healthy specifically for me”? If you’re ready to take some action visit The Cognitive Health Coach today. There’s a video where you can learn more about your brain health and memory and you can request a free brain health guide.
Read more from Lindsey Byrne
Lindsey Byrne, The Cognitive Health Coach
Lindsey Byrne is one of the first Re: CODE 2.0 Health Coaches in the UK, helping people to implement the Bredesen Protocol to improve brain health and memory and prevent dementia.
Lindsey helped her Mum improve her memory despite a diagnosis of Alzheimer's and then dedicated her life to spreading the word in the UK that there is so much you can do to to stay sharp and productive for your whole life.
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