FeaturesRachael Espinet2 Days AgoKheston Walkins is the owner of Allegory, a neuro-innovation company that uses neuroscience to teach people how to regulate their moods. -

GLOBALLY, mental health experts are bracing themselves for a mental health fallout from the covid19 public health crisis.

Some people are anxious about catching the disease, while others worry about their finances.

As people in TT are confined to their homes, some peoples rates of stress have gone up while for others the stressors of everyday life have been removed.

People living in hostile homes, who lost their income or are living with trauma may be experiencing intensified stress.

Others whose basic needs such as food, shelter and livelihood are fulfilled are probably enjoying the slowdown. People are learning to bake, are spending time with their families and seeking out those they love while they are stuck at home.

But that slowdown cannot last forever, and stress will again creep back into their lives when the country gets busy again.

On May 6, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh spoke about the impending psychological aftermath of the stay-at-home measures. The ministry is working on a countrywide attempt to treat with the mental health needs of citizens.

Newsday presents a two-part series on the science of stress the biology of stress and how someone can recognise signs of stress to help them manage their mood.

On May 1 Newsday spoke to Kheston Walkins, owner of Allegory, a neuro-innovation company that uses neuroscience to teach people how to regulate their moods.

Stress is tension, pressure or strain in the body. It is the bodys reaction to external stimuli, such as sitting at a desk for too long, a fight with a loved one, staring at screens or any perception of danger.

Stress is the limbic systems way of communicating something is wrongand needs to be rectified. The limbic system is the part of the brain responsible for emotions and memory. The amygdala is responsible for the fight, flight or freeze response.

The human brain evolved to react in this way to signs of threats. When a body is stressed the heart and breathing rate increase.

In those conditions, the body releases stress hormones such as adrenalin, noradrenalin and cortisol. Adrenalin and noradrenalin are neurotransmitters that get the body ready to move in the fight, flight or freeze response. Adrenalin increases blood flow to muscles. Noradrenaline gets the body ready to react.

Cortisol is the stress hormone that tells the body it is no longer under threat and reaction can end.

The stress response hormone system provides an instant response to a threat but quickly returns to normal homoeostasis.

However, in chronically stressed people and people who are traumatised, their stress hormone system continues to secrete stress hormones long after the threat is gone.

Stress may seem benign, but many people have been living with stress for such a prolonged period that they arent aware that their moods are negatively altered because of the stress.

Stress can make you irritable, hostile or even violent.

Why do we have these physical responses to stress? Two hundred thousand years ago homo sapiens evolved in East Africa. The brain evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to deal with deadly threats that no longer exist.

Plover Avenue, Maloney Gardens, under water in October 2018. Flooding is an anticapted annual stress in TT during the rainy season. -

Think in a less civilised setting, and youre hunting an animal or there are wild animals around, you want to be able to have your heart rate increase, have your breathing rate increase because it oxygenates your blood and it sends more oxygen to your brain and the muscles you would need for running, Walkins said.

As there are fewer physical threats, people get stressed, the brain releases the same primal response from 200,000 years ago. The body will experience elevated heart and breathing rates but the energy created to fight off the threat often does not get consumed.

When you get scared, you run. In primary school, we hit a jep nest or the neighbours dog and you run. You run away, pant, and the endorphins start flowing to make the body feel good.

However, there are situations where people feel anxious, but there is no end, or consumption of energy, and that is problematic.

Eustress, distress, chronic stress and acute stress

Stress can be acute or chronic. If a person is surprised, that stress is acute and activates the stress response. Its not necessarily bad: there is eustress and distress.

Eustress is a positive and temporary stress that enables people to be more alert. If a person has an exam, that stress compels students to double-check their work. Or if youre walking in an unsafe area, youre more vigilant about the surroundings.

This stress can work well in the short term because cortisol increases memory retention. It accelerates the transformation of an experience from short- to long-term memory.

Darran Bonval of Plover Avenue, Maloney Gardens, shows the destruction in his home from floodwaters on October 2018. Flooding is an anticaped stress TT during the rainy season. -

This is a positive use of stress. But there is another stress that can be negative. Where you worry about things that (have a) low likelihood of happening, thats anxiety.

Nothings wrong with being anxious, but chronic anxiety is a problem.

Someone with chronic anxiety is also chronically stressed. Cortisol is secreted throughout the body over an extended period. Chronic stress for prolonged periods can cause negative effects in the prefrontal areas of the brain and places associated with memory.

This is one of the reasons why people who are high-stressed tend to be forgetful and they worry, and that in turn makes them more stressed, because they worry they are forgetting.

The triad of fulfilment or frustration: thoughts, feelings, actions.

When someone gets hungry, they are compelled to go get something to eat. If they dont get the food, they would then get angry or hangry hungry angry.

When a person is hangry, they are less tolerant of other people and are easily irritated. This is an emotional reaction to a biological need.

Most people think everything starts with a thought, but you could start with a feeling. If youre hungry, you could generate irritable thoughts. Youre not thinking youre hungry, youre thinking. This person is annoying.

The same is true when the body hasnt gotten enough sleep, is physically exhausted or if a woman has premenstrual syndrome (PMS).

You have a feeling. That can be connected to a thought, but if you dont have an action, it creates a loop of frustration. If youre anxious, you dont want to feel like that.

The body needs a release from the anxiety, otherwise it gets frustrated. The body does not want to be stressed, so a person is compelled to engage behaviour to mitigate the stress, such as walking away from the stressor, drinking alcohol or eating sweet or oily food. But these are cosmetic solutions and dont relieve the physiological stress response.

Not getting what you need creates frustration. Theres maladaptive behaviour that can result.

This may be substance abuse and violence, which Walkins describes as maladaptive behaviour because it does not benefit the organism.

But it happens. In children, you see them lash out because they cant get what they want, and they cant calm down. They dont know how.

And you see this with adults. When you say, Just calm down, that gets them more frustrated.

Telling someone to calm down invalidates how someone feels. If they cant control how they are feeling, it frustrates them further.

In part two of the Science of Stress, Walkins will discuss techniques he teaches his clients to deal with stress on Thursday.

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The neuroscience of stress - Trinidad News