For today’s class, you read the “Stress” chapter from John Medina’s Brain Rules. Spend the first ten minutes of class summarizing what you remember from the reading in your notebooks. Before our class on Monday, you will want to type and save copies of your summaries for today’s reading and the previous one on the “Sleep” chapter. Then, copy-and-paste your summary on “Stress” as a comment to this blog post, and copy-and-paste your summary of “Sleep” to the previous blog post that is specifically about that chapter. You will not receive credit for putting your work in the wrong place. Read the blog posts carefully and post your work accordingly. This is building your digital literacy and professional attention to detail. Your summaries for both chapters are due before we come into class on Monday.
19 thoughts on “Beginning of Class Writing: John Medina’s Brain Rules, “Stress””
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Medina talks about stress, its positives and negatives. People often think that stress is only a negative process your brain goes through, but Medina says that there is also good stress. When you are in a stressful situation that lasts for a moment and requires quick problem solving skills, stress boosts your skills for that moment. The pressure gets to you in a good way. What most people know about, and are mostly concerned of is chronic stress. This is the stress that is long term and can potentially critically damage your physical and mental functions. Whether the problem stems from family, work, school, etc, these long term problems can cause problems with your heart and brain. Stress affects your learning and productivity levels, so there has to be a way where we can cope with these problems so it doesn’t translate to the work one does. Medina discusses a way which employers can manage their employees’ stress by giving them some way of counseling. This can also be said for schools. Their stress won’t be translated to their work if the stress is managed. One way that I cope with my stress is by not thinking of them. Its easy to say, but when you know the benefits, its good. Not thinking of stressors helps me see that I’m not the only one going through problems, and also, that life goes on.
In the stress chapter in John Medina’s Brain Rules, he talks about how stress can harm our brain and slow down our brains productivity. The brain is built only to deal with stress for 30 seconds, not long term stress. When we have long term stress, our brain is heavily harmed. For example, a bad marriage is like living and sleeping with stress for your entire life. This can have a major toll on your brain which over the years can shrink your brain. Having too much stress damages virtually every cognition that exist. Having too much stress damages our memory, executive function, can damage our motor skills and when stressed for a long period of time, can damage our immune response. Thus, we are easily able to get sick by just being stressed all the time. This is why, if you want to live a happy life and use your brain at its maximum potential, don’t stress out too much. If you want to get into Harvard, don’t have bad relationships with anyone and live life stressful.
Whether it’s from work, school or home, everybody experience stress, well that’s what I believe. Most people know that stress can cause damage to the mind, but some may not know stress also causes damage to the body. According to John Medina Brain Rules stress chapter, a vast quantity of stress would lead to cardiovascular problems, which can cause death. High stress can cause too much adrenaline production, which then makes scares on the inside of a person’s blood vessels. The scares accumulate molecules that creates plaques and block blood vessels. The blockage of blood vessels results in a heart attack, or sever strokes. Knowing this can make someone stay away from stress. By managing your stress, you are not only helping brain, but lower the risk of cardiovascular issues. One major effect stress have on the brain is its effect on memory. Brain Rules states that severe stress the mind ability to retain memory, and even studies have shown that stress makes the mind unable to solve certain problems, and scenarios using old pieces of information. The level of the amount of stress a person receive is very vital. Little amounts of stress is good because it can recall certain memories quickly, and releases low amounts of adrenaline in difficult situations. In addition to vital keys of stress, the type of stress a person is getting is just as important. The worst type of stress John Medina Brain Rules said is, when a person start to have the feeling of helplessness. Helplessness causes depression that can lead to suicide. From my own experiences I get stressed out in school from all the work I receive from professors. When I get stress my mind is unable to function properly, and get the work done. Ways that I handle my stress is by exercising and playing video games. By doing this, I am not only relaxing the minding, but increasing its functionality.
In brain rules stress chapter, medina talks about how stress can help the body but it can also slowly destroy it. When stressed your body releases the hormones adrenaline and cortisol that can influence different parts of the body. For instance it affects the circulatory system by boosting its performance; it makes you faster strong and can increase your endurance. However it can increase your endurance. However, if with chronic stress your blood vessels become dilated with high levels of adrenaline and cortisol, this could cause scarring inside the blood vessels and could cause clotting. It can increase your memory and help you problem solve, but too much of it can affect your able to process information efficiently. Medina also talks about said the worst type of stress, is when someone start to have the feeling of helplessness. Helplessness can also cause depression and could lead to suicide. Ways that I handle my stress is by drawing pictures and playing video games. By doing this, I’m not only relaxing my mind, but increasing its cognitive function.
In John Medina’s “Brain Rules” there is a chapter that speaks specifically on something everybody goes through in the world and that one thing would be “Stress”. The brain usually cannot deal with stress in the long run amount of stress. In fact enough stress in your lap can eventually kill you. How? well if you deal with more stress than your body and mind can take eventually it’ll be out of your control and your brain won’t be able to take it all. It’s like the brain is going to eventually shrink. In example to that, If you are in a bad relationship or more so a marriage that isn’t going well. Stress can pretty much kill everything in your brain and tend to do bad things to your memory. You can get more so depressed you can also even lose your train of thought more often than usual. It can even effect your ability to sleep which in my opinion is one of the worst things about stress. One thing that he mentions that is the worst way to be stressed is to be in a stress level that makes you feel like you cannot control it and you are trapped overall. Like being in a deep hole that you cannot climb out of. But the best way to deal with stress is to take walks, Listen to music, Be isolated, Don’t let it takeover your life, Don’t over exaggerate, spend time with family and loved ones. But stress however is something that will get to EVERYONE living on this earth. Nobody will be able to escape it. However the good thing is that you can deal with it in any specific way that stands out in your favor.
In the chapter John Medina talks about all the different types of stress. Stress is a very big thing today and will probably continue to. Stress is a very common factor that occurs in everyones body. When peoples tweets stressed the don’t function properly. Examples such as; not eating a balanced diet, not getting enough sleep, feeling as if they have pounds on there backs, etc. Medina states that adults who are 50% more stressed tend to result in poor activity then other adults who are less stressed. Being stressed can do a lot to the body. Certain types of stress can hurt the body in various ways. The worst type of stress that John Medina talks about is when a person start to have the feeling of helplessness. Helplessness causes depression that can lead to suicide. Another thing that Medina talks about is how stress can create cardiovascular problems, which can lead to death. High stress levels can cause the body to produce too much adrenaline. When that happens it makes scares on the inside of a person’s blood vessels. The scares multiply molecules that are able to create plaques and block blood vessels. Blood vessel blockages can result in either heart attacks or sever strokes. It can possibly lead to death. As a college student I can relate to this topic very easily as well as many other students. When I get stressed I sometimes get very emotional. To solve the problem I write everything died on a piece of paper creating my self a check list. Another thing I do is go to the gym. Going to the gym helps my body and my mind both mentally and physically. It is basically my stress reliever where I can let out all my anger and stress, and take my mind off everything. To me, an example of stress would be school. School to me is like a big suite case of pressure. If you forget to do one thing, then its game over. For the past week I wasn’t able to catch up on most of my school work. Every day I would come home late and I would try to do all of my homework and I would study for tests while I was on my way home from school. By the time I would get home I would be exhausted. I would go to bed so stressed and the next day wake up tired. I would never have time for myself because it was always school, school, and more school. Now, I’m trying to learn time management so I can still get all of my school work done and at the same time have me time. Stress is a big thing that no one can getaway from. It’s like a magnet. No matter where you go or what you do wether is work, planning events, driving, school, etc, there is always some type of stress. that stress can always be taken care of some how and someway.
In the stress chapter of John Medina’s “Brain Rules,” he mentions how stress was only meant to last for a few seconds. Stress is a large amount of adrenaline and cortisol released to your system which was originally meant for fighting of predators or injuries. This is known as acute stress which boosts your cardiovascular system and brain performance. Acute stress is beneficial to body and can improve the ability to learn. However, if left in your system for too long, it will begin to produce scars in your blood vessels and will create plaques which causes blockage of blood vessels. If blocked in the heart, you will have a chance of getting a heart attack. If blocked in the brain, you will have a chance of getting a stroke. Stress also affects the immune system by decreasing the amount of white blood cells. The worst kind of stress is the feeling that you are helpless to do anything and you have to control over the situation. Medina then continues onto emotional stress and how it impacts your ability to learn and work productively. He gives an example after he experiences his mother swear for the first time. One of his mother’s most precious student’s grades had begun to drop and she shouted out, “The ability of Kelly to do well in my class has nothing to do with my class!” Apparently Kelly was experiencing trouble at home which impacted her performance in school. Emotional stress impacts a student’s ability to learn and concentrate in school and affects an employee’s productivity at work.
In the stress chapter of John Medina’s “Brain Rules” Medina talks about what stress is, the different kinds of stresses, how stress can affect ourselves and well being, and his own personal experience he had endured when he had to deal with chronic stress. It is stated in the chapter that it is hard to identify stress in a human since stress consist of similar characteristics that one may undergo during sexual intercourse. However, it says that stress is when the human body has a series of hormonal responses that is sprouted due to the brain. These hormones that the brain releases in the human body is only meant to last seconds, for the brain is causing the same response in the human body that it may undergo during a fight or flight responds when confronted with a threat. However, in today’s world us humans undergo this same hormonal response in our body not just for seconds, but for prolonged periods. The fact that we are allowing our bodies to endure this for prolonged periods of time is doing more and more damage to our physiology. In the chapter it is stated that if you undergo stress for long periods, it can cause micro tears in your blood stream. These micro tears can eventually clot, and when they do, it can lead to a heart attack or a stroke. It is advised in this chapter to try and avoid these long periods of stress by trying to manage ones stress.
In this next Chapter on John Medina’s book “brain rules” He is basically talking about how stress may affect your brain. He clarify that their it’s not symptoms that can be show by the body and tell or let someone know that this person has stress, He also indicated that stress didn’t have definition, but there was two scientist that gave a definition to this word. They stated that if a person has all these three things happening at the same time it was a sing that this person it’s dealing with stress. This thing were 1) a measurable physiological response 2) a desire to avoid the situation and 3) loss of control. He gave examples of all three things together with his own son when he discover that he was dealing with stress. He also said that in many cases people that deal with stress may cause brain damage and the individual may stop doing certain thing all depend on the type of stress they have.
Something that really stresses me out is don’t be able to do something. Let say i want to solve a math equation and i try like thousand way and still couldn’t solve it , this kind of thing block me out and i can’t do it at the end. But their it’s also another side, if i know that i know how to solve it so i just try to keep calm and solve it and the answer pops out.
In John Medina’s Stress chapter in “Brain rules” one of the thing he mentions is what chronic stress could do to the cardiovascular system. It creates scars in the arteries which become sticky and lead to blood clotting which can cause a heart attack or a stroke. He also mentions that chronic stress affects the way we learn. It makes it much more difficult to learn and stress also makes you feel helpless. What makes me feel stressed personally are things like final exams, big presentations, and insects. The way I deal with other stressful situations is by sleeping which makes me feel relaxed, refreshed, and gets my mind off of the topic or subject for a while. I know a couple different methods that people try is yoga, meditation, and other brain stimulating activities.
In John Median forth chapter, he discuss the forth brain rule which is stress. This is something that everyone has to deal with at some point in their life. Medina starts off the chapter with yet another interesting short story. This time it was about a German shepherd dog, who wouldn’t leave the shock chamber even thought there were an exit. This was all due to the fact that a few days earlier the dog was stuck on an electric wire. Because the dog was stuck so long on the wire it stated to affect its learning ability.
There are a lot of different types of stress and some of them can hurt you while others can boost your brain ability. Our bodies are made for stress but only if it lasted a few second. This is why we are so good with the fight or flight concept. Because of stress we were able to survive and evolve to the creature we are today. Stress could also be fatal and that is only if it is long term. It could affect our memory and problem solving ability in a huge way also it could damage our cardiovascular system overtime. One of the thing that causes me stress is when I have too much to do in a limited time space. Personally I deal with stress by listening to music or doing my favorite hobby.
In this chapter John medina talks about stress. He mentions how stress is bad for your heart, and brain. He explains how stress can cause blood clots, increase of heart rate, heart attacks and strokes. also how stress can cause learning disability and lose the ability to think properly. having a huge pack of work in front of me cause me stress and being stress out about the work causes even more stress over that and then i start getting overwhelmed and end up not being able to do anything.
John Medina’s stress chapter is based off of four key points. Firstly your body releases hormones into your blood as soon as stress starts. This is one of the methods the body uses to deal with the stress. This mechanism however, is only built for short term stress. His second point states what happens when you have to deal with chronic stress. If your stress is chronic (constant) the hormones that are released into your blood to help you cope with the stress begin to work against you. Those hormones begin to rip apart your arteries and veins, this can lead to you experiencing a heart attack and/or stroke. To add, these hormones can also damage the learning center of your brain, mentally crippling your ability to learn and remember for the rest of your life. Thirdly he states that the worst kind of stress is helplessness. It is the worst because it creates such a strain on the body as well as the mind that you cannon do anything. You become literally helpless and cannot think for yourself. His final point is that emotional stress is one that affects all members of society individually as well as a whole. Some of the stress that I encounter in my life is the stress of always practicing for shows while still keeping up with my school work. Another is to get over my stage fright, which I have not found a cure for.
The stress chapter talks about how stress can affect us at home, school, and work. Stress has the ability to blockade cells that got to and from the brain. If these “tunnels” are blockaded , a person is bound to fell and become more angry. It can also affect the way we do small tasks each day and can mess them up. A simple way to deal with stress that I use is to play games in which I have complete control over.
In John Medina’s Brain Rules “Stress” it explains learned helplessness and explains different type of stress and how to tell if someone is stressed. Measurable physiological response, desire to avoid the situation and loss of control. The two main things I recalled that was extremely stressful to the point I had a minor mental breakdown was the stress to live up to my parents expectation and school. This may be a stereotype, but it’s also true that Asian parents have unreasonable and reasonable expectations for their child. In my case, they were being reasonable, but after being told repeatedly the same things over and over again. I felt like some part of my brain and emotions responded with stress piling up to the point my brain couldn’t handle it. For any stress coming from school, I would escape into games that I play on the computer to avoid thinking about. As for my minor mental breakdown, I simply ran to my bathroom, locked myself in there and sat there letting all my emotions come since my brain felt that was the only way to release all this stress that was built up.
In John Medina’s “Brain Rules”, he introduces the brain rule number four “Stressed brains don’t learn the same way”.This topic of stress is very interesting, since I am a college and most of the time I am stressing about a midterm or a quiz. Medina talks about the negative impact stress
has on the brain and body. Medina says that “ stress ravages part of the immune system involved in producing antibodies”page 64. This mean that the bodies of people under stress are more like to get sick. This is because stress is harming the body .When I am under stress I usually take a break and walk away the issue I am facing, then I come back when I am calm and collected myself. Under stress I also notice that I academically do not perform as better , as oppose if I was calm and normal.Furthermore, Medina describes a few methods of dealing with stress in healthy way. However, there are unhealthy ways that some people of deal with stress too. This unhealthy things are cigarette and drugs. the best way I release is by watch a good movie or show. By watching a movie my mind gets distracted and I feel I am part of the movie or something. This is because I get deep in the characters stories. Yes, everyone is different, so everyone else will have a stress relieving activity.
In , “Brains Rules” John Medina tells us how there’s a variety of stress and how all of it affects our bodies and brain. He summarized how our human bodies are used to immediate short-timed stress. Our brains have learned to react in this manner. However, in our modern day this immediate short-timed stress that our human ancestors faced is now replaced more with long term and consistent stress. If this consistent stress starts to become chronic stress then there will be obvious negative effects. When our bodies go through any form of stress , the brain tells the body to release hormones that aid the body cope with the stress. However, if chronic this continuous release of hormones can thicken the veins which can lead to a heart attack, stroke, or other unfortunate health outcome. Besides this, Medina also speaks about emotional stress that everyone deals with throughout their lives. Lastly, he tells us about the stress in which we feel when we feel helpless. The idea of being helplessness to our brains frustrates it. If we feel this way, the stress that this causes to our brains doesn’t allow it to function well. In my life, I like everyone else on this planet, deals with some type of stress. More specifically the things that cause me stress is the idea of not achieving something I knew I could, trying to not disappoint my parents, college, and the future.
What is stress? Not all stress you receive is the same. Stress can be beneficial for you, but for most time it could harm you. Every individual experience stress differently than other. It is hard to detect or determine whether a person is feeling stress or not. A great example of this is sky diving because for the majority of people will be stress out of their mind just to jump out, while some people will be excited to jump. In order to feel stress, you need to be able to measure the physiological response, desire to avoid the situation and a lost of control one gives out simultaneously. Chronic stress is being in danger mentally It is important to note that stress is meant to be short term and not long term, which could really damage you permanently. Under stress, our adrenaline pumps out, but if it stayed on for more than needed to, it creates a scar in your blood vessel. This can cause a heart attack or a stroke, which cripples your ability to learn and remember.Stress can help you learn faster, while for most it hurts the ability to learn. We often think stress of a person is when they are getting angry and yelling at everyone. this is true, but it is not the worst kind of stress, The worst kind of stress anybody can experience is the feeling that you have no real control over a problem you are facing. That the sense of helpless.There are something to relieve yourself from stress, which I would recommended, they are exercising and sleeping.Stress is something you should face once and awhile, but if you are stress all the time, you should look for a way to be stress free.
In Chapter 4 of Brain Rules by John Medina, we learn about the effects of stress on the brain, both positive and negative. The main point that is emphasized throughout this chapter is that “Stressed brains don’t learn the same way”. It is shown through experiments done on people, and on animals, that the greater amount of stress in one’s life will decrease the learning capabilities we have established over generations. Due to the release of the stress hormone cortisol, which directly attacks the hippocampus, we tend to lose our memory, resulting in forgetfulness and in worst cases, amnesia. Also when under a lot of stress, the adrenaline in your body starts to attack your blood vessels, which could eventually to heart attacks and strokes. Still not all stress is considered harmful. Under just the right amount, your brain can become more aware of the dangers and adapt better in certain situations. Your senses may heighten and the ability to obtain knowledge could increase as well. The effect of chronic stress that comes from home, school, and work could lead to anxiety and depression, which is why, is said that the best way to deal with stress is to find control within you. Elimination of factors such as a bad relationship, or an overbearing job can help lower the rate of stress you deal with in your everyday life. Also doing aerobic exercises can help raise your BDNF, keeping you calm and healthy.