Latest / The Body Rhythm: Nervous System Health, Digestion & Daily Rhythms for Women / Ep. 37 Feeling Forgetful? What Stress Is Doing to Your Brain

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Ep. 37 Feeling Forgetful? What Stress Is Doing to Your Brain · The Body Rhythm: Nervous System Health, Digestion & Daily Rhythms for Women

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Body Rhythm.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: So glad that you could join me today.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: And tell me if this sounds familiar.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: You walk into a room and you forget why.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or you go over to someone to ask them a question and it escapes your mind.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe that's just me.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it it seems to happen more often when I'm under stress.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you lose a word mid-sentence and you can't find it.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: A word that you've used a thousand times.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then maybe in your mind for a split second, you think, does that just happen now that I've gotten older?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is that just the way that things are?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've heard the stories from my elders and grandparents about losing the memory.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so maybe we begin to think that this is just the new normal.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're like me and you're only in your 40s and this is already happening to you, um, but it seems like I am hearing this more and more from women who are younger and younger, late 30s, 40s, early 50s.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we tend to think of brain health as a later in life conversation.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Something that you start worrying about when you're 60s, 70s, 80s.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: But there's been new research that just came out that really reframes this entire conversation.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want to talk to you about today, because it's super exciting and it impacts how we live our life on a day-to-day basis and how our brain ages as we get older.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So as I've gone about working with women, meeting women, you know, as part of my job and out and about, I meet women who think that something is wrong with their memory, myself included, especially this last year when I was under so much stress.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was just forgetting things right and left, couldn't hold anything in my mind.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe this is you.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're in your 40s.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: You are sharp and intelligent, but you keep losing your train of thought in a meeting or in a conversation, or you walk into a room and you blank, or you reach for a word or a name that used to come instantly, right?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And for myself, this was really jarring when it started to happen.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was wondering what was happening here?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: What was really going on?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: But what this research has found is that it's not the beginnings of dementia or Alzheimer's.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a memory problem, right?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly my memory is just like gone to the dogs.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: It is a body that's been running on stress and fragmented sleep for so many years, and that is beginning to show up in the way that it always does through the brain first.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: So in April of this year, 2026, there was a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association, and it really readdressed what brain health actually is.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So if we look at previous ways that have been the prevailing way of thinking about brain health, um, we think of memory loss, dementia as later in life issues.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: But brain health isn't just about memory, it also has to do with stroke and stroke risk.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so um it's about managing blood pressure and cholesterol and maybe crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: But this new statement from the American Heart Association defines brain health as an entire whole life story.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain health today, your brain health at 60, 70, 80, 90 is determined by your entire life story.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And this lines up directly to what Ayurveda has always said.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: How we live our life manifests, pops up, and how we feel today.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Something that we did 10, 20 years ago can finally show itself in our bodies today.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: This AH ACE statement said that what happens to you in your childhood, the stress, the adversity, the inflammation early in life can show up decades later.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it can show up as memory loss or cognitive decline in your 70s or 80s, which is really wild to me, right?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because in Ayurveda, everything that happens to us from the time that we're born takes us away from our optimal ideal balance where we feel the best.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then it begins to show up later in life, and that's exactly what this study has shown.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if every event is an opportunity to take us further away from balance and to show up as memory loss or cognitive decline, that also means that every moment in life, every stage of life is also an opportunity to return back to balance, is an opportunity to bring in practices to help ourselves feel better in our bodies and to reduce risk for memory loss and dementia and stroke later in life.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the researchers found that chronic stress isn't just a feeling.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Long-term stress, long-term anxiety, uh, depression creates real structural changes in the brain, inflammation, and a loss of neural connections that support memory and clear thinking.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that same stress response, the one that keeps your body leaded with stress hormones, the flight or flight response, sympathetic activation, also damages your arteries over time.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so a body that is stuck in chronic stress, survival mode, anxiety, depression, maybe fluctuating between all of them.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's all connected and it all impacts how we feel later in life.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've talked about this a few times on the podcast, but your gut is always talking to your brain, and your brain is always talking to your gut.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And gut bacteria produce, and so the gut bacteria in the microbiome can produce compounds that either protect your brain and calm inflammation, or when the gut is out of balance through eating processed foods, through eating bad food combination, those bad compounds increase inflammation and put your brain under more stress.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so one researcher described a healthy gut like a pharmacy.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's quietly producing what your brain needs to function and keep going and be well, right?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: But an imbalanced gut, often driven by highly processed foods, starts producing the opposite effect.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: We start noticing it.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: We start noticing the bloating and the heartburn.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's progressed to an inflammatory condition of IBS, Crohn's disease, ultimate colitis.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so just imagine that the inflammation, that the bloating happening in the gut is affecting the brain over time.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it is affecting how your memory functions.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe just not functions today, but functions where you are 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, or 30 years from now.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: I find this just so, so, so fascinating.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: One of the other ways that the researchers found that brain health is a whole life story is through our sleep.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're kids, sleep builds the brain, right?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're adults, sleep has that lymphatic system that's clearing out the brain of toxins as we sleep, it's cleaning out all the waste that is accumulated from the day, the day of thinking, the day of stress, the day of effort, the day of anxiety, the day of depression, right?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we sleep and the brain is doing its toxic cleanup work, it's getting us ready for the next day.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if we are not sleeping, if we have chronically poor sleep, if we have something like the sleep apnea, right, then that becomes a risk factor for memory loss later in life.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so then sleep becomes so important, part of our whole life story of how memory can be affected later in life.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think about myself for many, many, many, many years, starting as a kid, I did not sleep well.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Toss and turn, up all night, especially in college.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was up every day, every night around 2 a.m., couldn't get back to sleep till about four or five, and then up in the morning to get ready for class.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then that pattern followed me into work, and I worked a job where the hours were a bit erratic, and that pattern followed me.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it really wasn't until I got into Ayurveda that I was able to correct sleep.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: But as I've been learning through Ayurveda, through the research of how important sleep is, that it's not just a luxury.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: It is important, it is necessary for our entire well-being.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And like this new research says, it is important for our brain health as we age.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And one additional thing that the researchers found that affected brain health was where you live.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Your environment matters.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Things like air pollution, microplastics, wildfire smoke.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: The researchers called this the dirty sponge effect.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's slow cumulative damage to the blood-brain barrier that's supposed to protect you.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if after year after year after year, we're impacted by the environment, it can just slowly break down that blood brain barrier.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I know it can be easy to hear all this.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a whole life story.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Everything from the time I was born and all the pollution and the sleep and the food has impacted me now, and I'm just a goner, you know.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it can feel like the deck is stacked against you, like your childhood, all the stress you've had, all the traumatic experiences from a decade ago, everything has already been decided.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not what the research says, and that's not what Ayurveda believes either.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And where the research and the ancients line up is if we've had a hard childhood, if we've had a hard life experience, if we've suffered with anxiety, if we suffered with depression, if we've suffered with attachment and addiction, we are not destined for decline because every single stage of life, every single day, including the day that you're in today, including the season that you're in right now, is a chance to change the path you're on, is a chance to make new decisions, is a chance to bring the body into balance, is a chance to change maybe one small thing about how you eat or how you sleep, or maybe using less plastic.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I find this so empowering because then we don't just become someone who is influenced by everything else.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there is a part of it too.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have um just part of life, right?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: But we can also be our own agents of change.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're our own agents of change, then we also have the opportunity to feel better and live longer in our life.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I also think it's important when we think about brain health as a whole life story, then it's not just one dramatic intervention.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not one miracle supplement or one extreme protocol.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is a rhythm of life.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's about sleep, it's about regulating stress, it's about what you're feeding your body, what you're feeding your gut.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's showing up day after day in small, sustainable ways.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's consistency over, it's consistency over intensity.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because your brain, your brain health is responding to the pattern that you're living.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that I think is so important when we create the time to pause, when we create time in nature, when we create time to do gentle movement, when we create time to stand out in the sun, when we find time for connection and relationship to others.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is actual medicine for our brain health, so that when we reach 70, 80, 90 years old, we are feeling fabulous and great and joyful and at peace.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if you think about it, I did an episode a few episodes back about a woman who is living, she's 117 years old now, and actually the way that she was living is showing up in this research.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's just so amazing.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to offer a different way to think about the small things.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: The evening wind-down routine that maybe you're skipping, or the stress that you're white knuckling through instead of tending to, pushing through, saying, I'll get to it later.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: The processed food that you keep reaching for because it's easy and it's become your answer on a hard day.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I have been there myself.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: But this isn't just about how you feel today or this week.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things are an investment into your whole body health, into your brain health, into your cognitive health, for a brain that you'll be living with for decades.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Think of it as an investment.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: An investment in yourself.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because it means that today counts.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: The choices that you make today count.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: The here and now counts.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever your history is, whatever your last five, 10, 20 years have looked like.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: This stage, the one you're standing in today, is an opportunity to change things.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's an opportunity to start making choices that will feel better in your body and that will help the brain function at its best as you age.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that is one of the most exciting things to read out of this research.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you're curious about how your everyday choices, stress, anxiety might be showing up in your body, in your sleep patterns, in your gut patterns, and how you might just be feeling with low energy, tossing and turning.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've actually created something just for you.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is the hidden signs of burnout decoder, and it goes through the nine top signs of burnout and what those symptoms are in your body.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a great place to start understanding what your body might be trying to tell you.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: The link is in the show notes.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if this resonates with you, let me know.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear from you, Chelsea at Chelsea Johnson Ayurveda.com.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a question or just wondering what's going on in your body, let me know.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear from you.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And have a wonderful rest of your day.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And remember that every day is an opportunity to start feeling better in your body, an opportunity to let our brains get a little bit healthier.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Body Rhythm.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Be well and nourished.