How to protect your brain from toxic stress: This step-by-step guide by a world-leading neuroscientist can quell your anxiety, help you focus, ward off dementia… and help you live again

Our brain can continuously grow, adapt and rebuild. It is connected to every organ, cell and tissue, which is why better habits can pay off for its health – keeping you sharper as well as helping to keep dementia at bay. Here, in the final part of our exclusive series, world-leading neurologist Dr MAJID FOTUHI reveals clinically proven ways to deal with stress and negative thoughts and strategies to improve your concentration and memory.

What with juggling work deadlines, family commitments, household bills and even tricky relationships, it’s little wonder that life can sometimes feel pretty stressful.

Although they may seem to be caused by external factors, everyday stresses, anxieties and worries of this sort are in fact rooted in our brains.

Our thoughts, even our strongest beliefs, result from chemical processes in various networks of our brain, based on our perception of the world. These then govern and influence our behaviour – and it can be easy to get stuck in a negative stress loop.

For instance, you may feel overwhelmed at work because you don’t think your colleagues are pulling their weight. Such stressful thoughts may influence your behaviour towards them, making you less receptive to their views. This may then prompt them to act in ways that reinforce your negative thoughts, leading to a downward spiral.

However, it’s important to realise that you’re not powerless. You can learn to change your thoughts and assumptions to adopt a calmer, more balanced mindset.

This isn’t just about quality of life, it’s also about the quality of your brain, as stress can have a destructive long-term effect on your grey matter.

High levels of stress hormone cortisol are linked to a smaller hippocampus, the brain area involved in memory, and may also accelerate brain ageing, according to multiple studies.

This is where my transformative Brain Fitness Programme comes in. As a leading neurologist and professor at the Mind/Brain Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore the US, I have developed a simple, science-backed plan to help you to significantly improve your brain power in just 12 weeks – and reduce your risk of dementia.

Taken from my new book The Invincible Brain, today I’ll show you practical tips for dealing with brain-damaging stress, as well as introduce you to easy but effective techniques to build a stronger, quicker and more resilient brain.

So why do people become stressed?

Beyond your brain, in your central nervous system, your body has an entire network of nerve endings that cover all your internal organs, from your heart to lungs and bladder.

You’re not consciously aware of this network, which is called the autonomic nervous system (ANS), but it’s responsible for mobilising your body to deal with perceived threats, often referred to as the fight-or-flight response.

This originated as a survival technique but, these days, instead of confronting bears and wolves, our brains react to modern threats: accidents, difficult relationships, work pressures – events we perceive as concerning, hurtful or dangerous.

Stress begins when our emotions trigger the hypothalamus to release the hormones cortisol and adrenaline, enabling us to act and escape.

Under normal conditions, these hormones recede once the threat has passed. Your emotional network then orders your hypothalamus to stop producing adrenaline and cortisol and you slip back into rest-and-digest mode.

Heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, blood flow, pupils and airways all return to normal.

But if you’re chronically stressed about everyday matters, you stay in fight-or-flight mode even when there is no real threat, which is both miserable and damaging to the brain. 

Excessive prolonged cortisol exposure is toxic to the hippocampus. Human and animal studies have shown that chronic stress can impair memory, neuroplasticity, neuronal firing and even the structure of neurons, suppressing the creation of more of them, reducing the size of the hippocampus.

A Japanese study which followed 70 adults with an average age of 72 for seven years found that those with the highest cortisol levels at the beginning of the study experienced the most shrinkage of their hippocampus by the end.

Look at issues from a different angle 

Learning to adopt a different mindset can’t solve every issue but it can help you reach a state of mind that makes problem-solving easier and less stressful.

One technique to try is reframing, which involves changing negative thoughts by naming them out loud, questioning whether they are actually true and looking at things from another angle.

If someone said something to upset you, your first reaction might be that they intended to hurt you or didn’t like you.

But what if, instead, you thought, ‘That person’s problem isn’t my problem’, or even ‘Perhaps that person is going through a hard time’?

Separating what someone said from your feelings about it can significantly affect your stress level and de-escalate a situation. Learning to forgive someone has real brain benefits, too.

Remind yourself of the positives

The longer you stay angry or upset, the longer your adrenaline and cortisol levels remain high, damaging both body and brain.

Every day, take at least ten minutes to consider what you need to manage your problems.

Is that looming deadline overwhelming – or is it actually an opportunity to get the thing done? Could you negotiate an extension? What’s the worst that could happen?

Nurturing a sense of gratitude can also help to right-size your worries. Try listing three things you are thankful for every morning and evening – it’s a simple way to shift focus from what’s going wrong to going well.

Try prioritising organisation to free up mental space. Compile a short, realistic list of high priority tasks that need doing that day.

This can prevent you from worrying about longer-term projects. If a lower priority job doesn’t get done, address it the following day.

Feeling in control is a powerful antidote to feeling overwhelmed.

Schedule time for your happiness

Planning activities that bring you genuine happiness can help to mitigate the impact of any stressful events. Here are some suggestions to try:

• Calm yourself: Any activity that immerses you – so time seems to fly past – can be extremely calming. I listen to relaxing nature sounds before sleep.
• Find your people: Socialising is a powerful way to reduce stress. Spending time with supportive friends and family boosts wellbeing, distracts you from your own thoughts and stimulates the release of the bonding hormone oxytocin, counteracting cortisol. Research shows socialising improves mood, cognitive function and even increases dopamine release in the brain’s rewards pathways.
• Meditate or pray: Spending calm, focused time in spiritual reflection reduces stress and increases emotional wellbeing. Research links a range of spiritual practices, including prayer, to lower inflammation and improved immune function.
• Volunteer: Helping others takes your mind off your own problems and has significant stress-reducing effects. It triggers the release of oxytocin and fosters a positive mindset. One study found that regular volunteers have lower cortisol and inflammation levels.
• Exercise vigorously: A gentle walk in the woods is relaxing but a vigorous exercise session may be a more powerful way to dispel stress. It releases endorphins, improves mood and boosts the brain-boosting protein BDNF, helping to create new brain cells. Several studies show high-intensity exercise significantly lowers feelings of stress and anxiety and increases hippocampal volume.
• Yoga: A potent stress reliever, thanks to its combination of physical movement, controlled breathing and mindful awareness. Research shows people who practise yoga regularly have lower cortisol levels, better emotional regulation and feel more resilient against stress.

7 reasons middle-aged people forget things

Most of us forget things in middle age and I often see people who worry that their memory lapses may be a sign of dementia. In my experience this is rarely the case.

Here are some of the most common reasons you may find yourself with mid-life brain fog.

1. Can’t do it mentality: When you (falsely) believe you can’t remember anything, you don’t try hard and so you forget things easily, which ‘proves’ to you that you have a poor memory.
2. Hormonal changes: Thyroid, oestrogen, or testosterone abnormalities can affect learning and memory.
3. Poor sleep quality: Sleep is essential for memory consolidation, especially deep (slow-wave) sleep. Repeated night-time oxygen deprivation due to sleep apnoea damages memory-related brain areas.
4. Sedentary lifestyle: Lack of physical activity reduces blood flow and BDNF, a key brain growth factor.
5. Poor diet: Diets high in sugar and processed foods can cause inflammation and insulin resistance in the brain.
6. Depression, anxiety and chronic stress: These conditions reduce focus, shrink the hippocampus, and impair the memory network in the brain.
7. Alcohol and substance use: These can shrink the hippocampus and damage synaptic connections. 

TARGET THESE AREAS OF YOUR MIND TO MAKE YOUR BRAIN INVINCIBLE

Focus and attention

• Practise working on a task for 20 minutes without any distractions. Gradually extend your focus to two or three hours.
• Engage in deep conversations by actively listening and recalling key details.
• Listen actively to TED Talks, podcasts or audiobooks without distractions. See how long you can maintain focus.
• Practise mindful observation by studying an object – e.g. a tree or building – for two minutes. Then close your eyes and recall as many details as possible.
• Limit digital distractions by setting time aside from digital devices each day.

Memory and learning

• Practise active recall by summarising key points from conversations and testing yourself on them at a later point.
• Memorise favourite recipes and test yourself on the ingredients and steps.
• Learn and use five to ten new words a day.
• Start learning a new language and practise daily with a language app.
• Read challenging material such as classic literature.

Problem solving

• Play strategy games such as chess, Risk or sudoku
• Debate against yourself: pick a topic that you believe in and then argue the opposing viewpoint.
• Solve real-world puzzles by navigating without GPS or without using a calculator.
• Describe a complex idea in simple terms to someone outside your field, ensuring they fully understand.
• Play ‘what if’ scenarios by imagining alternative historical events or business strategies.

Processing speed

• Time yourself while playing thinking games such as Wordle or crossword puzzles. Can you beat your previous time?
• Look at a scene for ten seconds, then close your eyes and recall everything you saw.
• Work on increasing your reading speed while ensuring you still grasp the key ideas.
• Rate your daily progress, using the charts in my book or app (seedrfotuhi.com) scoring yourself from 0 to 10 depending on how well you have achieved your goals.