Inculcating healthy habits can help your brain tackle stress

Without having to consume alcohol or sugar, the brain can be trained to tackle stress by inculcating healthy habits, opined neuroscientist Dr Selena Bartlett. According to Bartlett, who has been mapping the way our brains react to stress for the last 25 years as a researcher, our brains often deal with stress and trauma through addictive behaviour such as the consumption of sugar and alcohol, reported Stuff.co.nz. The Queensland University of Technology researcher also said that the first step towards attaining a peaceful mind is to understand that you can 'train your brain' to handle stress efficiently. Adding that creating even the most basic healthy change takes time, she said: "Only when we start to become aware of our automatic, often unhealthy, responses to stress, then we can start to rewire them." Bartlett, further said that prolonged over-consumption of sugar acts on the amygdala, emotional part of the brain, in a way that makes the brain more reactive to stress. "We can train our brains to become more resilient by using the principles of neuroplasticity. We can also teach ourselves to take a healthy path to stress-management rather than relying on substances," she added, according to Stuff.co.nz.