So when I start talking about stress and the impacts that it can have, the story sounds pretty scary. And very quickly parents and educators would like to remove all stress from a child\u2019s life which is really a bad plan. In research on stress, we distinguish between those things that can activate stress biology, and we talk about those as stressors, not as stress, because not everyone will react the same way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We talk about stress as the actual activation of the biology, because in terms of what can impact the body, it\u2019s the activation of the biology that we\u2019ve got to be the most concerned with and the way the body reacts to that activation. So, on the side of stressors, everybody\u2019s a little different when we start talking about things that are milder. So, I don\u2019t know about you, you might like to ski, but being on top of a mountain on skis, looking down at that little clubhouse down there is a massive stressor for me because I don\u2019t know how to ski and I\u2019m going to kill myself trying to get down the hill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how we react to events has a lot to do with our interpretation of those events. Whether we feel safe, or threatened, or whether we think we can control those events, or not, whether we can predict when they\u2019re going to happen, or not. And for young children, especially whether we have a partner with us who is capable of providing safety. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that\u2019s the stressors side, and we can talk about all sorts of particulars. The stress side, we\u2019re designed to be able to activate these systems. We need these systems. If you can\u2019t activate these systems, you\u2019re dead meat. And we know this because, in premature babies, for example, sometimes as a result of being born so premature, they\u2019re not able to mount effective stress responses. Those babies have terrible blood pressure. They\u2019re at risk of dying. They\u2019re actually given stress hormones to try to get their blood pressure up and to try to get them capable of managing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we have to be able to activate these systems. But these systems, along with doing wonderful things to mobilize our energy, and focus our attention, and help us remember what\u2019s dangerous and threatening and so on, are also very catabolic. They\u2019re all about breaking down energy stores, making nerve cells shoot, and fire off and create chemicals, etcetera. So it\u2019s like too much of a good thing. It really becomes a bad thing. So, if you\u2019re chronically activating these, running them high, then you\u2019re sort of, you\u2019re producing incredible wear and tear on the body. Something that\u2019s been called \u201callostatic load\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So we\u2019re preserving ourselves through activating these systems, allostasis, but there is a cost to that; an allostatic load. And it\u2019s all that allostatic load that builds up over time and creates big risk for mental and physical health including diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, and effects on the immune system, and increased risk for emotional disorders, and learning problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With young children, these stress hormones are even more problematic if they\u2019re run unchecked. Because the brain is developing itself in the context of these chemicals that are potentially creating problems, and are shaping a highly anxious, fearful brain. So, anytime in life, chronic stress ain\u2019t so good for us. Chronic stress. Chronic activation of these systems. Early in life, we\u2019re building the brain, and the context of chronic activation, and that\u2019s sort of a double, double issue <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So when I start talking about stress and the impacts that it can have, the story sounds pretty scary. And very quickly parents and educators would like to remove all stress from a child\u2019s life which is really a bad plan. In research on stress, we distinguish between those things that can activate stress biology, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-text-only.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1370","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1371,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1370\/revisions\/1371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}