Imagine it's the 1920s.
This student doctor named Hans Selye looked at all different patients and notes that they
have a lot in common.
They all look tired.
They prefer to lie down rather than stand.
And they're not in the mood to go to work.
Selye identifies this as stress.
Fast forward a decade and a lot of us look tired.
We'd prefer to lie down and we're not in the mood to go to work.
And the reason for this is still stress.
But what's changed is that stress is often referred to as being caused by just one hormone
cortisol, the stress hormone.
But the stress hormone doesn't really exist.
We're about to dive in to how stress works in your brain and how you can overcome it.
But before we do that.
Inhale.
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Quick side note.
So stress includes physical stress, which is the impact that disease has on your body,
and psychological stress, which is more what we'll cover in this video if you just want
to skip ahead to learn about how to cope with stress, you can use the chapters feature to
do that.
Now, cortisol is a hormone with a publicity problem.
For years it's been vaguely written about as the stress hormone whose spike causes a
high heart rate and tense or overwhelmed feelings.
But this isn't exactly true.
So when you hear about stress in the media, it often gets boiled down to cortisol.
And cortisol is described as the stress hormone.
And the thing that causes stress, which isn't necessarily true.
In my attempt to rebrand cortisol, I called Dr. Elizabeth Engler-Chiurazzi.
Liz for short.
Liz is a neuroscientist.
I'm an assistant professor at Tulane University, and she also spends a lot of time playing
roller derby.
It's a really chaotic sport, so if you go to watch a game, there's just a lot happening
all over the track all at once.
And so it can be very confusing, which also describes how our bodies responded to stress.
There's a lot happening all at once and it can be confusing.
So because it can be confusing, it's often oversimplified and just boiled down to cortisol,
but it's constantly flowing through your veins.
Cortisol’s role is to give you a burst of energy when you need it.
It peaks at different times.
Like when you're waking up in the morning and need to be alert.
Cortisol does play a role in how we respond to stress, but alongside other hormones, how
does cortisol fit into this whole experience of what's happening in your brain when you're
stressed?
There's so much more going on because, you know, this is, again, such an important response
evolutionarily.
It peaks at different times.
Like when you're waking up in the morning and need to be alert.
Cortisol does play a role in how we respond to stress, but alongside other hormones, how
does cortisol fit into this whole experience of what's happening in your brain when you're
stressed?
There's so much more going on because, you know, this is, again, such an important response
evolutionarily.
You know, if we just relied on one hormone to do all that work and mobilize our response
appropriately, I think we if something went wrong with that system, we wouldn't last very
long.
What also gets engaged hormonally, but what gets forgotten to be discussed are the very
important and sometimes even redundant effects of adrenaline and noradrenaline also are known
as epinephrine and norepinephrine.
It's so interesting to consider that adrenaline also plays a role in the stress response in
this system.
Because cortisol gets such a bad rap, there's all these negative connotations to cortisol
spikes.
But adrenaline spikes are things that people seek out.
People might be adrenaline junkies and going on rollercoasters and things like that, playing
roller derby and playing roller derby.
So all of these hormones act in their own special ways to mobilize the body for that
fight or flight response.
Right.
The sympathetic nervous system response to a threat.
Now, you may have heard of that fight or flight response before.
It's how our body physically responds to things that we perceive to be stressful or fearful.
And it's often I'd say you usually described in terms of threats that our ancestors experienced
way back when.
So imagine that.
And we see, you know, a saber tooth tiger in the periphery of our vision and we hear
a twig snap.
Right.
That's going to engage the stress response.
Just how having perceived that stressor, why do you think it is that when describing a
stress response or a fear response, scientists are obsessed with saber tooth tigers or grizzly
bears or polar bears or some kind of large predatory pursuer.
So, I mean.
Well, I like saber tooth tiger because anybody with a cat knows that, you know, those animals
are vicious, even if you have a cat do.
And she she we're lucky she's small.
Let me just put it that way.
We like those examples because they're very primordial, very visceral.
And whenever we think about a large beast with very sharp teeth and claws, that action
activates a stress response in our minds.
Just a little bit.
This is how the stress response work in your brain.
You can experience or perceive a psychological stress up, like a meeting with your boss or
saber tooth tiger, and you activate three main pathways that begin in the brain.
The Sam axis is a fast response.
It's activated by a region in the brain stem from their nerves in the sympathetic nervous
system, activate part of the adrenal gland, which spits out adrenaline and noradrenaline,
causing an almost immediate increase in heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen uptake.
Then meet the HP axis.
It's one that the effects last longer when it's activated, the hypothalamus pumps out
a hormone called CRH which causes the pituitary gland to make a hormone called ACTH.
ACTH also acts on the adrenal glands, causing them to release cortisol.
In the context of the stress response, cortisol can increase heart rate and sugars in the
blood, so your muscles have energy to fight or run.
But it's not all bad.
Cortisol can actually improve your working memory.
This is just a snapshot of these pathways.
There's many other brain regions, neurotransmitters and hormones that are involved in your overall
stress response.
Now, this is what I think is the most fascinating and important thing about stress.
So, yes, you have this complicated stress response that happens in your body that engages
a lot of brain regions and hormones and neurotransmitters, but stress is something that is perceived.
It starts in the brain.
And because of that, it's also something that you can almost think away.
We've mentioned the word, perceived it quite a few times, things that we perceive to be
stressful.
Just having perceived that stressor, you can experience or perceive a psychological stress
up at a basic level.
You have to perceive something as stressful to feel stress.
So when we're thinking about psychological stress from a clinical perspective, controlling
your response to stress and stressing less has to do with changing the way that you think
and reframing your feelings.
So all of the hormones and things that you just described, they're still in your system.
You're just almost like thinking them away.
So a lot of the advice around stress focuses on reducing it using mindfulness meditation
or relaxation techniques, which are fantastic.
If you were using those and they are working for you, please do not stop doing them.
But some research suggests that it might be better for us to embrace these feelings of
activation and arousal.
Instead, this technique is called anxiety reappraisal or cognitive reframing, and it
focuses on reframing these feelings of stress or anxiety as excitement.
Stress or anxiety and excitement actually have a lot in common.
They both involve a high intensity reaction, like an increased heart rate, fast, a breathing
and steadiness.
All of those things that I mentioned are happening in your body before.
But we often perceive stress or anxiety as negative and excitement as positive.
So reappraisal can help us feel more positive, even in situations that are stressful or anxiety
inducing.
This is also played out in research.
So researchers have found that when participants are given a surprise task of doing karaoke
or public speaking in front of strangers, saying I am excited compared to saying I am
anxious, actually leads those people to feel more excited and perform better in those situations.
So even if all the physical sensations and everything going on in your body remains the
same, reframing a task as exciting or positive, it can help you feel less stressful and perhaps
even perform better in that task as well.
Many people have said that the space between where expectation lines up with reality is
the spaces most human misery.
Right?
So I totally agree that the therapeutic interventions really designed to reframe how you are perceiving
a situation really do have a calming effect on both your experience of the stress, but
also can potentially feed back to the physiology and they can reduce how you physiologically
respond either with court level increases or, you know, neurological activation in areas
that mediate processing of aversive or threatening stimuli.
And personally, I find that there's something really comforting about that.
Like it helps you understand the power of your mind because it gives you more control
over things that you might think are outside of your control.
Like you still have the adrenaline or the cortisol in your body, but instead of perceiving
them as stress, you're thinking, Oh, this is exciting.
All right, so think about how situations could be challenging in a positive way for you rather
than being stressful.
So perhaps a difficult meeting that you have coming up with your boss is an opportunity
for you to be challenged and grow professionally and personally rather than being fearful about
it or a surprise.
Karaoke or public speaking task is an opportunity for fun and excitement rather than stress
and anxiety.
This, of course, takes some work and you need to be in touch with how you're feeling.
And it does take time to reframe how you're thinking from negative to positive.
But you can always start in any situation by just saying, I am excited or get excited
if you're unsure, or if you start to feel stressed and it's helpful to know that stress
isn't always bad.
In many situations, stress can be a good thing.
Anything in moderation is generally okay.
So a little bit of stress, a little bit of adrenaline helps awaken, you know, many things,
right?
Psychologically and physiologically that you might not have been able to experience or
achieves, if not for that, that challenge in that moment where stress and cortisol become
bad is when we experience them chronically.
The experience of stress involves a bunch of brain regions, neurotransmitters and hormones,
not just cortisol.
But remember that you can be in control of this process knowing more about how stress
works in your brain and body.
Help you understand how you can reframe it to your advantage so perhaps you look less
tired or you are in the mood to go to work.
You are excited.
More specifically, I'm excited to do more courses and lots more documentaries on at
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If you'd like to learn even more about psychology, they have a great intro course, appropriately
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Whether you're learning for the first time or it's refresh your memory development, dreaming
and consciousness you can probably skip stress.
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Yeah, I suppose I'm on a mission against simplification of hormones.
I just want to help people understand what's happening in their brain and body.
And currently I'm like cortisol brand representative.
I'm cortisol PR ambassador.
I'm just trying to make things more positive for cortisol out in the world.