Healthy Brain, Happy Life (25 page)

After a week of answering questions about what we liked to do and where we liked to eat, we decided to meet for lunch near Carnegie Hall, where he often performed and practiced. We hit it off right away. While he was on the quiet side, he was very smart, interesting, and loved good food—a huge plus for me. This was starting to look promising.

Daniel and I went out for eight months, during which I got to hear a lot of fantastic music, eat at some great restaurants, and learn a lot about the classical music scene in New York City. Some of my warmest memories of our time together were the evenings I would get to see a beautiful opera performance (albeit alone because he was playing with the orchestra) and we would meet afterward for a romantic late-night dinner, and he would tell me all about the trials and tribulations of working with this difficult conductor or that one or about that one who completely lost the whole orchestra in the middle of the rehearsal. I loved it. But then again, on other nights, I would go home alone because he had to rehearse after the performance for the next day. At first his intense rehearsal schedule didn’t interfere at all because I was busy too, but I came to realize just how consumed he was with his work.

In the end, Daniel wanted to get involved only so far. He was just not able to spend enough time with me because he was more married to his music than he could ever be to me, and we broke it off. It’s always sad to break up, but something was different with this breakup. I realized I had enjoyed the ride. I was glad we went out and was glad to have known him and seen at least a little bit inside the world of the intense professional musician. I was getting both bolder and much more comfortable and confident in my own skin. This was clearly changing my romantic relationships, and I was able to step back just a little and appreciate it for what it was and move on. Don’t get me wrong—it still really hurt when we broke up, and I had sadness and tears and anger. But that cleared up fairly quickly, and I was okay.

The other observation I made with more than a little bit of irony is that I was still a firm believer in the idea that you attract the kind of person you are. In Daniel, I attracted an intelligent, sensitive, interesting workaholic who was so obsessed with his work that he could not fit a close romantic relationship into his life. I had to look at myself and ask, Is that what I am? I had come a long way from the days when my social life was like a deserted ghost town from a Clint Eastwood movie. I really had. I had lots more friends and a much more active social life. But in the end, I still prioritized work over everything else (even if I made more time for those other things). And maybe I still judged myself by my success at work. I may have come a long way, but I still had a ways to go. And I would know I had gotten there when I started to attract men and other friends in my life who were not distracted workaholics but who were confident in their own skin and balanced work and other aspects of their life in the beautiful way I aspired to. Still a work in progress. But progress had been made.

TAKE-AWAYS: HOW EXERCISE MAKES YOU SMARTER

•  Aerobic exercise can transform an academic classroom.

•  One semester of just once-a-week intentional exercise can improve response time in healthy college students.

•  Eight weeks of twice-a-week intenSati improved four measures of mood and well-being in patients with traumatic brain injury.

BRAIN HACKS: HOW DO I INCREASE MY EXERCISE? PART II

It’s easier to get in your four-minute workouts if you involve your friends and family, so don’t be shy about challenging them to join in the fun.

•  Have a four-minute pillow fight with someone you love.

•  Do jumping jacks through all the commercials of your favorite show each week and challenge your family to do the same.

•  Challenge someone to an arm-wrestling match.

•  Dance around your office, bedroom, living room, kitchen to your favorite song. (Try “Bang Bang” or “All About That Bass” for starters.) This is also a guaranteed mood booster and energy lifter—let those singers do the work to get you moving! If shadowboxing is more your thing, do that instead!

•  At work, go to the bathroom on another floor and take the stairs.

•  Bring a jump rope with you, and jump wherever and whenever you have time.

•  Play and move with your dog or cat.

I STRESS, YOU STRESS, WE ALL STRESS!
Challenging the Neurobiology of Stress Response

D
o you remember when you were a kid in school and you heard the teacher unexpectedly say the words
pop quiz
? Do you remember your heart starting to race and your palms getting sweaty as you waited for that dreaded sheet of paper to be passed down the row? That was your stress system at work. It turns out that little jolt of adrenaline you felt helped you remember all those state capitals better than if you hadn’t gotten it. These brief bursts of stress are your body’s nervous system becoming aroused.

Stress, in other words, is not all bad. Research has shown that moderate amounts of stress can be beneficial for our health, strengthening our immune system and cardiovascular system and speeding recovery from injury. Our stress systems also work as a vital warning system to help us get out of danger when we need to flee from a burning building or jump out of the way of a speeding car.

On the other hand too much stress, especially when it lasts for a long time with no end in sight, can be dangerous for our health. Chronic, long-term stress has been linked to heart disease, depression, cancer, and other life-threatening diseases. Like everybody else, I endure a wide range of different kinds of stressful situations each and every day. Everything from my daily commutes to the onslaught of a hundred new e-mails in my inbox to fighting the crowds at the supermarket is a source of stress. Stress is constant, inevitable, and seemingly unavoidable—or is it?

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE STRESS?

It turns out that our bodies have a set of three beautifully coordinated systems that help us respond to stress. The first part of this triad is our voluntary nervous system. This is the part of our nervous system that allows us to send commands to our body to get up and move. The basic parts of this system include what is called the primary motor cortex located in the frontal cortex and the pathway from that brain area via the spinal cord and nerves to all the voluntary muscles of our body. Voluntary muscles are the ones that we can move consciously and that can mobilize us to escape from dangerous situations.

The second key system that helps us respond to stress is that part of our nervous system called the autonomic nervous system. There are two parts of the autonomic nervous system that work in two very distinct situations. The first is called the sympathetic nervous system, responsible for our fight-or-flight response. When a stressor arrives in our life (lion, earthquake, nuclear disaster), it’s the sympathetic nervous system that gets activated and prepares the body to respond. It does this by increasing heart rate, respiration rate, and pupil dilation (the better to see the charging lion with). The sympathetic nervous system will also send glucose into the bloodstream so the body and muscles in particular have quick access to energy and will also divert blood toward the major muscle groups in case we have to run. Other systems that are not needed in times of emergency are shut down, including kidney function, digestion, and reproduction. In other words, a lion attack is no time to pee, poop, or ovulate. Do it later.

The second branch of the autonomic nervous systems is called the parasympathetic nervous system, or the rest-and-digest system. This is the system that kicks in when we are relaxed, and basically works to reverse all the emergency 911 functions of the sympathetic nervous system. This system decreases heart rate, respiration rate, and pupil dilation. It sends blood and energy to the digestive system so you can digest that big Sunday brunch, supports reproductive function so women can ovulate and men can produce sperm, and allows for contraction of the bladder so you can urinate. The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems coordinate their functions so that when one is active, the other takes the backseat and vice versa.

The third system involved in response to stress is called the neuroendocrine (hormone-release) system. This involves the secretion of two key hormones that are released in situations of stress to carry out some of the stress-response functions of the sympathetic nervous system. The first hormone is cortisol, made by the adrenal glands, which are located just above the kidneys. In response to stress, the sympathetic system signals the release of cortisol, which increases glycogenesis (the release of glucose into the bloodstream), suppresses immune functions, and decreases bone formation. In an emergency situation, that burst of cortisol helps activate our brains and our major senses so we are more alert to better deal with an emergency situation like finding the way out of a burning building. The second key hormone released during stress is adrenaline, also produced in the adrenal glands. It’s the release of adrenaline in situations of stress that increases your heart rate to get the blood pumping; it also increases blood pressure, expands your air passages, and dilates your pupils. It’s adrenaline that gets your body ready to run from that lion.

These systems have been beautifully calibrated to help in two major kinds of situations. The first is unexpected emergency situations analogous to a lion attack in the wild where there is an acute danger and your body’s response systems get immediately activated and aroused for action. This system also deals well with non-life-threatening but short-lasting stress, as when you need a rush of energy to finish running a race, to get a big project done by deadline, or to make it on time to pick up your kids. This same system gives you the necessary burst of energy to get the job done.

THE STRESS SYSTEM’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

But as we have evolved and as our environments have become more complex, developing into complicated social systems, the sources of our stress have changed. In our plugged-in, online, 24/7 society, stress comes at us from all directions—from the guy talking really loudly on his cell phone on the train to the demanding boss to the competition to get ahead in your field. These are not fast-acting stressors. On the contrary, they are chronic, pervasive forms of stress. Note that these kinds of chronic, mainly psychological stressors were simply not present as humans were evolving in the plains and forests of Africa. The dirty little secret is that despite its sophistication, our stress system can’t tell the difference between real life-or-death emergency situations and today’s chronic psychological forms of stress. As a consequence, worry over paying your taxes can activate your stress system in the same way as a herd of charging wildebeests. Your worrying about taxes probably activates the system less than an unexpected wildebeest, but it gets activated all the same. The same is true of our perception of any event, circumstance, or troubled relationship: If we think of it as stressful, we experience it as stressful. It doesn’t seem right, but that’s how it works. If the sympathetic system stays active for these chronic stresses of our lives, then the parasympathetic system is never active, and your body and brain do not get any relief from the state of constantly being ready to flee or fight danger.