Does stress affect your memory?

In today’s world the term stress is more heard of than work. Not knowing when enters our mind, it becomes a part of our routine life and a habit. The run to catch a bus or train or the time stuck at a traffic signal in your car, while going to work in the morning every single day. Stress is there to reach in time, be at your best, hold back your emotions, maintain yourself at workplace, balance family time and the list is never ending.

Imagine one day of your life without stress! Peaceful isn’t it! Unfortunately that ain’t happening all by itself. Satiric though, you need to work for that too. If you don’t want to spare some time to overcome stress you might no more remember stress, not just stress you may even bid goodbye to a lot of things; including your memory.

The Astonishing Reality:

• Stress causes imbalance in the body functions and in response to this stress alterations in the body can occur.
• Staying in a stressful environment makes you prone to many diseases.
• It affects the Central Nervous System (CNS) and different parts of the brain.
• Due to this size and mass of the brain reduces, leading to decreases cognitive function and memory.
• Effect on the brain in turn also changes the ability to respond to stress.
• When parts of the brain like hippocampus, amygdala and temporal lobe are altered due to long term stress, the speed of learning decreases, disturbances in memory occurs and also, cognition and mood disorders can be seen.
• The number of neurons in the brain also decreases as a result of CNS changes due to stress, thereby affecting memory.
• Hormones secreted by our body called stress hormones, when under stress, as well has negative effects on memory.
• On the contrary in some situations stress can improve your memory retention and learning for a short period, as you become more alert and stress hormone cortisol has a role in it.
• Like the day before or an hour before the exam we tend to remember everything more clearly.

Calm yourself down, stress doesn’t let you fly high it makes you forget or confuse the steps to rise up! Stress rarely gives anything yet, takes away so much!