Stress Alone is Enough for Brain to Shut Down Body

 It's hard to imagine really that the sympathetic nervous system, once activated and particularly steadily activated long-term, can  eventaully lead brain to do anything and everything it can to protect itself.  The protection powers are so strong that a brain could protect itself, quite literally "to death."  How does any of that make sense?

Photo Credti: Skyler H, Unsplash

The body operates ideally and optimally when the para-sympathetic system is in control.  This is where homestasis - not chaos (chaos occurs with the sympathetic activation) - works for the good of body and brain.  Brain power protection is not needed when para-sympathetic is in control.  Heart rate, thinking, memory, breathing, nutritional and fluid intake, outputs in digestion - all operate ideally in parasympathetic - and in the absence of high stress.  

Stress can lead brain to move to literal fight or flight - even when a person is actaully safe.  Stress introduces the fight and flight hormones into the body announcing from and to the brain that "we must act."  Body tightens up, heart rate speeds, breathing changes, eyes eithter narrow or widen, logic is null and void (to the degree that the stress response is harming body/brain) and brain continues to go about making itself safest.  At first it protects the heart and the brain with more blood surrounding these central to life organs - but eventually even the heart will be ignored for brain's sake.  And that can mean death.

When I was a practicing therapist I often spoke of the death of Robin Williams.  So many knew of his parkinson's but few new of his depression and nearly no one spoke of his stress.  Robin Williams was deceased a year and he still had 4 or 5 movies coming out.  Can you imagine the stress he was under to produce such volume?  It's possible that his fight or flight response was to shut the brain down so that the fight/flight could be ended - not by reason (logic is absent in extreme fight and flight) but by some paradoxical and sadly fatal shut off to the parasympathetic.  

It's as if brain says "enough is enough" and the safety valve is not that at all, but really it's a shut off valve.  To silence the never ending fight and flight can be how people move to maladaptives of all sorts, including suicide, for the sake of ending fight or flight.  And, I'm not saying that any of this is even in the prefrontal cortex of logic or that it is intentional in the consciousness. I'm saying it so happens that brain may just find a way to shut itself off for it's own "safety sake" at a fatal cost.  

Stress is a real thing.  It is an activator of the sympathetic system.  That is fight or flight.  Stay there too long and the brain and body will not protect itself to a person's good, but actually to a person's harm.  Heart problems, blood pressure, immune system dysfunction, memory - it's all impacted as the course of stress occurs.  So are attempts at self mitigation to stress: smoking, vaping, drinking, excessive eating, under eating, etc. etc. etc.  Brain will find a way to get back to the parasympathetic, even if it's harmful to the body to get there!

Is stress, then, normal?  Only when it can be managed such that the parasympathetic system is in control MOST of the time.  It's not enough to accept stress  (activation of the sympathetic nervous system) as normal "most of the time" as this blog points out.  Gettting stress under control deactivates fight/flight and activates the parasympathetic nervous system (the good stuff for real) where reason, logic, memory, homeostasis as noted earlier - normal oxygen, normal blood flow ... a sense of wellness and a sense of logical mindedness all appear.

Did you know that it is possible in fight or flight for the brain to begin to see and hear things that are not there as if to force the person to stop fighting everything and everybody?  Again a paradox of a brain that will cause havoc to protect itself.

Note: Kurt LaRose is a former mental health professional.  He is not and never was a neuro specialist, a hormone specialist and is not a doctor of any kind (MD or PhD).  LaRose has an MSW.  This blog is believed to contain facts that have not been AI checked, assumed to be as close to reasonably accurate as it can be.  Please consult an MD for medical advice regarding stress, high stress, impact on the body, and risks if untreated.  The blog here is for informational purposes only and relies on professional and personal history to be effected today.