Stress Makes You Stupid (Get Smarter!)

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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make more videos if there's some other topics that you'd like to have more

information on so for today thanks for listening