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The science behind brain fog – how stress unglues your brain

“I am coming unglued”, is not just away to describe being under pressure. It quite literally describes what is happening inside a chronically stressed brain.

I’ve had a rough few weeks. My to-do-list has exploded, while my actually doing list, has made little to no progress.

I seriously feel like I am coming apart at the seams.

And, in moments of panic and anguish, have flippantly remarked, to anyone who will listen, that “I am coming unglued”.

Researchers from Switzerland have discovered there is more to this terminology, than meets the eye. It turns out, the phrase “I am coming unglued”, is not a “cute” way to describe the rather unpleasant feelings, associated with being under pressure. It quite literally describes what is happening inside a brain, subject to chronic stress.

Making rats GO CRAZY

The team made the breakthrough, when they studied exactly what was happening inside the brain’s of rats, that had deliberately been stressed out.

Just like humans, it is relatively easy to stress out a rat.

All you need to do –

is take away their freedom, by confining them in a small space and
take away their friends, for a short while each day.

After 3 weeks of this treatment, you’ll have a freaked out rat, suffering from personality disorders, thanks to chronic stress.

The team confirmed that ….

In stressful moments

The body responds to chronic stress with a flood of “stress hormones”, such a cortisol. The stress chemicals are designed to help manage the stressful situation. And in the short term, the effects are good, but pro-longed exposure………………..

Creates more stress.

In the case of freaked out neurons, there goto stress chemical, is a neurotransmitter known as glutamate.

One of the ways glutamate brings a little stress relief, is it dispatchs a synapse clean up crew. Among the members of the team, tasked with cleaning up the links between nerves, is an enzyme known as matrix metalloproteinase, MMP-9 for short.

The team found that MMP-9’s big job, is to cut the sticky tape, known as nectin-3, that hold nerves together.

A minor clean up is refreshing….

Brain fog begins….

In the chronically stressed brain….

Thanks to the continuous activity, of the clean up crew,
And difficulties in finding the end of the sticky tape, due to overwhelm

more and more nerves become…………………. UNGLUED.

Your brain unglued

The old connections are “missing”, so things that you should know, are nowhere to be found. And, new stuff – just never gets integrated into the circuitry.

The overall result…..

Brain fog

And bad behaviour.

The brain owner is grouchy, grumpy, nasty, distracted and forgetful.

Ouch !

Avoid sticky situations

So………….. if you don’t want to come UNGLUED, literally and figuratively – you need to manage your stress levels.

A little stress will help you perform better, but too much creates a sticky situation.

NB. Stress is not only caused by psychological upsets, not getting enough sleep, infections and environmental toxins, can all create chronic stress.

Role for MMP-9 in stress-induced downregulation of nectin-3 in hippocampal CA1 and associated behavioural alterations. Nature Communications (2014) 5: 4995. Michael A. van der Kooij, Martina Fantin, Emilia Rejmak, Jocelyn Grosse, Olivia Zanoletti, Celine Fournier, Krishnendu Ganguly, Katarzyna Kalita, Leszek Kaczmarek, Carmen Sandi.

Interested in learning more about the chemistry behind brain fog ?

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