It is pointed out that the long-term stress shortens the brain and causes dementia

There is a growing possibility that chemical substances secreted by long-term stress triggered are harmful to the brain. Examples of "stress over a long period" mentioned here are married life without love, deadlock at work, spiritual trauma that comes from past experience.

Prolonged stress 'can shrink the brain' and even lead to dementia | Mail Online

As a result of the research published this time, it is shown that when a substance called corticoid secreted by stress continues to act on the brain at a high concentration for a long time, the brain cell may be destroyed. However, corticoids are not poisons, but reactions to counter the fear of under stressful situations "Attack / escape responseIt is a substance that helps and stimulates the sympathetic nerve to improve the blood sugar level.

Part of the brain that controls a part of memory · Because the hippocampus has a particularly sensitive property to corticoids, long-term stress destroys the brain cells of the hippocampus,dementiaIt is said that there is also the possibility of causing onset.

What triggered this discovery happened on 11th September 2001September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. A certain doctor scanned the brain when treating the president of a company that had an office in Wall Street and discovered that the hippocampus has shrunken as much as the elderly suffering from dementia.


Professor T Byram Karasu teaching psychiatry at the Albert Einstein medical college in New York said, "In the case of that president alonesample sizeThere is so little that we can not draw conclusions from here. However, I think that it can be said that stress has influenced the hippocampus, "I think, it refers to the influence of stress on the brain, especially the hippocampus.

As prior research similar to this research, there are those targeting soldiers and those targeting general women. The former was carried out by San Francisco Veterans Assistance Center Medical Center, and when I looked at the military person who had undergone mental trauma in the war, she confirmed that the brain was remarkably shrinking compared to other soldiers about.

The latter research on general women was conducted last year, and those who were repeatedly exposed to stressful situations among middle-aged women have doubled the probability of dementia over those who are not Results have come out. Research on the influence of stress on the reduction of the brain seems to be under way, but we are also awaiting discovery of a solution method how to stop it.