Page 62 - Time Special Edition Alternative Medicine (January 2020)
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Competition for our attention comes in three categories: threat, pleasure and novelty.
These days, new technologies allow us to peer be- stomach and your chest tightens.
hind the knitted brows and twitching eyes to see We all know too well how easy it is to turn this
what that worrying actually looks like. In a 2001 stress system on. Turning it off . . . well, that’s some-
study, researchers at Washington University in thing else entirely. Turns out toggling your brain
St. Louis used functional magnetic resonance im- between a pattern of agitation and one of calm isn’t
aging (fMRI), which captures real-time changes in like flipping a switch at all. How could it be? What
oxygen flow in the brain during mental tasks, to we’re talking about, after all, is nothing less than ma-
map a baseline state of cranial activity. They found nipulating molecular pathways that link the brain’s
that the amount of oxygen expended during many infinitely complex network of 100 billion nerve cells
routine chores—reading, for example—is actually with virtually every other tissue and organ in the
comparable to the amount dispersed during eyes- body. There is no remote control for that.
closed rest. But the portrait the fMRI painted of There are, however, other ways to change your
a brain working to tie up a bunch of loose ends— channel. As head of the Stress Management and Re-
a brain mired in stress—looked very different. A siliency Training (SMART) program at the Mayo
brain in the process of serially ticking off the up- Clinic, Amit Sood gives participants concrete ways
coming day’s to-do list activates a particular circuit to accomplish just that. But before he puts his mind-
of neurons that loops in the hypothalamus and the body medicine into practice, he showers them with
pituitary and adrenal glands and triggers the release science. “If you want to learn about stress manage-
of the hormones cortisol and adrenaline, both of ment and resilience, you need to know about the
which set the body on edge. Like a pebble dropped brain,” Sood says. He begins by describing two dif-
in a pond, this turned-on circuit then sends ten- ferent modes of the brain. One is activated when
sion throughout the body, pushing a variety of met- a person focuses on external events or tasks, like
abolic systems off balance. It’s why your heart races finishing a puzzle, appreciating a painting or get-
and your hands get damp, why a knot grows in your ting lost in a song. The other is the product of inter-
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