What does stress do to the brain?

By | October 21st, 2020

Stress is incredibly difficult and if you look at studies on caregiver stress for people with dementia it’s exponentially higher than caregivers of other illnesses for a lot of reasons. One is this grief of losing the person that I know and love who’s still here but not the same. This idea of ambiguous loss too because as the disease progresses it’s a very long and very arduous journey. Three, I think because our role change becomes so incredibly difficult to accept and I think caregivers want to continue on but it’s just not often feasible and so it’s these transitions and life changes and progression that make it incredibly difficult. I think as the caregiver load increases, the caregiver’s stress increases and it really affects their thinking, it affects their own sleep. This has a devastating toll on that person’s quality life which in turn affects their brain health and their thinking because there are things you need to do to take care of yourself. Things like getting good sleep, eating a healthy Mediterranean diet, exercise every day. How many caregivers can do that when they’re so overwhelmed? So physical exercise is still the very best thing you could do to take care of your heart and take care of your brain.

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