Misconception About Stress

“Stress” is something that nearly all college students can relate to, but without an understanding as to why or how it changes us. In general, stress is used to describe either an elicited response to situation, or the actual situation itself (which we would dub as a “stressful situation”). A misconception about stress is that it “is all in the head”, but there are physical manifestations in the body and brain that are a direct result of stress. We can better understand this through the fight-or-flight response, where survival instincts come into play to determine necessary steps to ensure survival.
When we find ourselves in a stressful situation, our sympathetic nervous system is active. Our adrenal glands then secrete epinephrine, norepinephrine, and steroid stress hormones (cortisol) as needed. As a result, our heartbeat accelerates, we breathe faster, the liver converts glycogen to glucose, and our eyes may even dilate. In the past, these would all come into play to determine the best path to survival when faced with predators, but in current times, this response can be elicited through things like work, school, and social interactions. A temporary fight-or-flight

Many people are skeptical about perceiving meditation as a treatment of any kind, but there are genuine benefits to the brain that have been observed by a myriad of research done recently. First, mindfulness meditation has been shown to decrease amygdala volume and overall stress. Second, meditation helps preserve the brain via increased grey matter volume, keeping all brain function in top shape (which means less damage done to stress related systems as we age). And lastly, mindfulness helps with alleviating stress altogether by regulating our own emotions during the flight-or-flight response. This is the most important benefit, as mindfulness allows us to rewire the brain in such a way that we can think and act rationally in any form of stressful