How Stress Affects Your Brain

How Stress Affects Your Brain Feeling overwhelmed, reactive, or like stress is changing the way you think and respond?
Stress does not just affect your emotions. It affects your brain, nervous system, patience, and ability to stay calm in hard moments.

In this episode, Dr. Patrick Porter explains how stress affects the brain, why so many people get stuck in fight-or-flight, and how breath can help calm the nervous system. Whether you are a caregiver or simply under chronic stress, this conversation offers helpful insight into what is happening in the brain and why it matters.

Hosted by Tina Rains, RN, and Melinda Lee Foster, this episode is especially helpful for caregivers, families, and anyone trying to better understand overwhelm, emotional reactivity, and how to return to a calmer state.

In This Episode:

• How stress affects the brain
• Why stress can make you lose patience faster
• How breath affects the nervous system
• What happens in fight-or-flight
• Why chronic stress feels so overwhelming
• A simple first step toward calming the brain

Hosts:
Tina Rains, RN
Melinda Lee Foster

Guest:
Dr. Patrick Porter, PhD

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🧠 About Dr. Patrick Porter:
Dr. Patrick Porter, PhD, is the Founder and CEO of BrainTap. His work focuses on neuroplasticity, brain fitness, stress reduction, sleep, and helping people think, sleep, and perform better through brain-based technology and training.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Tina got this amazing speaker for us. It's an expert, Dr. Patrick Porter. You probably are here because you saw one of our shorts and videos, and Tina had the amazing idea to do what, Tina?

SPEAKER_01 0:19

We're gonna break them up. We're gonna break them up into four different episodes because there's so much rich and great content that he gave. And so we want you to be able to just take little bits and pieces. We felt like if all four were together, you might just be overloaded. Right. So stay tuned, check it out, and we would love to hear your questions, your feedback on this episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

So um I wanted to start today like by just letting you know how frustrating and confusing and overwhelming it can be to deal with a 92-year-old brain. You know, I want to have empathy for my mom and everything that she's going through as a senior, but I find myself just getting so angry inside and like like this uh lack of patience. Like just I'm at my wit's end sometimes, and it's not certainly not me at my best. So I'm hoping today we've got a guest expert coming in that um you're gonna introduce, and I'm hoping that he has some words of wisdom and some techniques that we can all use as caregivers to help us just calm down a little bit when we need to come from that more loving space inside of us.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Dr. Patrick Porter is the expert on stress, he's the expert on the brain, and he's the expert on brain waves. So I'm super excited to have him with us today because he's gonna add value not only to the caregivers for themselves, but also help us understand a little bit more about the aging brain. So let's welcome Patrick Porter, Dr. Patrick Porter.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Hey, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it. Your background is the brain. Like what exactly inside the brain, like how the neurons fire, like how, like, what what is your specialty so we can really tap into your genius?

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Well, I think it's we call it brain wave entrainment. So in physics, there's a statement that says oscillating. Uh let's say that we have a tuning fork at 528. If I click it on the table and I have another tuning fork that's 528, it's going to resonate, and this one's going to send energy to this one.

unknown 2:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

So think of that like brain waves. And another analogy for the listeners is you know, if you live in the South like I do, the cicadas start, and one cicada starts in another, and pretty soon you got a whole group of them, and they start over here and then they go through a cycle, and they go through this cycle. Everything in nature is cyclic. And even brain function, when you're talking before about what's the aging brain, everything is cyclic with our body. It's not just women that have cycles, every biological thing has a cycle to it. In fact, even uh, you know, everything in nature has a cycle to it. So we can talk a little bit about that. So, what my specialty is how do I get somebody out of their sympathetic drive, that fight or flight, that fear response, that anxiety. And when you talk about um being anxious or fearful or being negative or being angry, all these negative emotions have one thing in common. And um, Tina's an expert at this, it's called your breath. You know, so when you think about most people, they just they stop breathing. So part of the protocol is to move your nervous system, you need to move your breath because your breath is directly connected to your nervous system. And you know, we knew this for 10,000 years with the yogis. You know, they it they would in ancient traditions they would teach people how to breathe, but people thought that's only for when you're sitting and crossed legged and looking at your forehead and you know, crossing your eyes and all that. That's not true. We need to breathe through all experiences, and and yeah. Yeah, right now there's one thing. One thing in common for the listener every negative emotional state has one thing in common lack of breath. You can't hold on to anger, you can't hold on to fear, you can't hold on to anxiety if you're breathing. But when you think of the joy states, the love states, the harmonious states, you can breathe through those because that breathing actually energizes you and makes you feel better. So part of the solution is just, and as simple as it sounds, I mean, and I'm gonna challenge the listeners next time you're across the table from somebody you love, notice how often they hold their breath. Because they'll do this, they'll they'll just they'll shock themselves back into reality because their their primitive brain, the amygdala, says, Hey, I need oxygen down here. You know, in and so it wakes you up to take a breath because people are used to holding their breath, especially when they're listening to somebody. Conversation should be a flow.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

So I'm catching myself holding my breath as you're saying that. I'm like, why am I not breathing?

SPEAKER_02 4:58

Yeah, so so breath is really important. And we found we found out very early on because before I started the brainwave and training we have with the technology that I have, we actually were doing biofeedback, not neural feedback. There wasn't when I was around, uh, for some of the listeners, um, I'm ancient compared to them. So we started in the 80s with biofeedback. We would look at respiration, breath, heart rate, skin temperature. These were all signs in our biology if we're in a stress state or if we're in a relaxed calm state called the parasympathetic state. So, you know, we can tell by our hands. If our hands are cold, we're probably in more of a parasympathetic state. If our hands are warm, we're more in a relaxed state, I mean, we're more in a parasympathetic state when our hands are warm. If they're cold, they're more in a sympathetic state, meaning that lack of blood flow circulation. And this affects the brain. Because when you get into that sympathetic state, you actually reduce blood flow to the frontal cortex. This is where we have our reasoning powers and compassion and love and all those things.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

And so I need to get the blood to the front of my brain as much as I possibly can whenever I'm dealing with my mom.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Yeah, because the the back, the back of the brain, the the primitive brain, the amygdala, that's just primitive. It's just trying to keep you alive. Its whole job is to protect you and keep you alive, and it looks at everything as a threat. And not everything's a threat, but some things are a big inconvenience, you know. You know, so when there's a saying that all unhappiness stems from unfavorable comparisons. So when you think about your life before you became a caregiver, then you get thrust in whether you, I mean, I don't think too many people joyfully skip into being a caregiver, they just find themselves in that situation. So you have to retrain your brain in all those different categories because now the expectancy of having joy and happiness and satisfaction is not there. But the reality is that when you are serving others, even if it's your parents, you do get a neurological benefit if you have the right attitude about it. So we can talk about you get the neurotransmitters, you get the the neuropeptides, you get the uh all the hormones, happy hormones that make you feel good just by being of service, because we all know somebody who's a caregiver, they're just happy go lucky, and hopefully they keep that. But typically what happens is you get on that last good nerve and then you say something snaps, and we just need to reclaim that. I mean, because uh we're all going that direction, right? And we want to absolutely in somebody's unless somebody figures out how to to uh like that Benjamin Button, you we go backwards in aging, you know, we're all gonna be somebody's gonna be responsible for me someday. Uh hopefully I can be like some of the people I've read about. They just live their life, drive their cars, and do everything to the day they pass on, you know. But if I if I need somebody to take care of me, I want them to be in the best state, physiological state and mental state possible, so that it's not a hindrance to them or to me, you know, and I think you can train your brain to do that.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Right. Absolutely. Are there suggestions that you could give um to a caregiver? I mean, I always, you know, I always bring out my hint water and you know, like uh and like the gut biomes and you know, like the all that, like as far as you know, making sure that your brain is getting everything you can. That's like a basic foundational stuff. And then like your technology is like taking it another step further. But like, what are those like super basic things that everybody can do, whether they have a brain tap or whatever?

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Well, there's there's three basic principles we talk about with brain fitness to keep yourself like the first day on the job. You know, what happens is the hundredth day or the tenth year on the job, you know, we kind of start, it's kind of like a relationship. We start talking about the toothpaste cap being off or the underwear left in the middle of the room. And before that was cute, but now it's not anymore. You know, so so what we have to do is keep that childlike mind, and and how you do that physically first, you have to move. Just because they're sedentary doesn't mean you need to be sedentary. There needs to be uh, we need to move our bodies. Our nervous system is designed to move and breathe, and actually, movement is life. So if you're not moving, your body will start to retard and go backwards. So they they say the equivalency of 20 minutes of setting is like smoking a cigarette. Now, cigarettes being blamed for everything now, so they they gauge everything after a cigarette. But the the reality is that your nervous system doesn't function well by sitting. If you imagine in ancient traditions, we the elders wouldn't be sitting in a tent waiting to die. They'd be up moving way before they were ever put into that tent. Now, if if for the last two or three weeks they had to go into the tent, then fine. But they were moving because the whole tribe was moving. They would either move or they were left behind. They didn't they didn't give them a choice. Nowadays, what we do is unfortunately we we make it too easy for them to do nothing. And so movement is really important. And I do have some tips outside of BrainTap for that. I mean, we use an exercise, uh electrostem suit called Vision Body, and you can actually buy one. We have it here at the clinic where people who can't even move, we can hook it up to their muscles and it can exercise their muscles like they're lifting weights, it can recruit 97% of their muscles.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Does it get you in shape too, Dr. Porter? I might need one of those.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

You probably, Tina, remember me about 50 pounds heavier. Yeah, you look good.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

I need I need a connect offline so you can help me with that.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

Yeah, the the the vision body suit, I can give you a link to that. But the um what I do is even if I'm too busy like this morning, I put it on and did my email. And it was like I did a full body workout in 20 minutes. So technology is amazing, isn't it? So so technology, you know, we're living longer, we're you know, and but the problem is that we're not using the technology that's available to us. So there's suits you can wear, there's uh little pads you can put on the body in different places to move the muscles. Um, lucky for me, there's a a woman that might be interesting for you to interview, her name is Dr. Lauren Laba, she's a PT and she gets people out of wheelchairs. Oh, I love on the daily, because and she introduced me to the vision body suit. And and so um, you know, I can introduce you to her, but there's there's technology out there. So movement's important. If you can still get up and move, then every 20 minutes, even if it's just sitting in the chair, moving your arms, doing different stretches, doing different breathing exercises, um the the that's the second phase. The second phase is we we have to get, I mean, I'm sorry, the first phase is actually eating. So you already talked about that a little bit. But one thing that I would add to that is every person on earth should be doing minimum these two things, besides what you said. Water is important, you need to drink half your body's weight in ounces of water. So if you weigh 100 pounds, you need to drink 50 ounces of water during the day. Not at one time, but throughout the day, because the body is cyclic. We need to have really good quality, like California olive oil or olive oil from Italy or wherever. That olive oil, it's magical to the body. In fact, 40% less chance of dementia if you do one tablespoon of olive oil. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Yeah, that is so fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Yeah, the the third thing that most people have forgotten because it's too inexpensive, it's too easy, it's called niacin, B3. And the reason for this is our brain is mostly made up of capillaries, not arteries. So when people get their blood tested, they they check 30% of their bloodstream. But the problem resides in the capillaries. And I'll give you an example. When they did the monkey experiment where they said uh this peanut oil was good for us, you know, and everybody all the health kick, everybody started eating peanut oil, but it's terrible because every monkey in that study died within three months of that study, because the oil wasn't in the arteries, it was in the capillaries. So a lot of seed oils are causing issues with brain fog and with brain function. So, how do you clear that out? You take niacin, B3, and you get a flush. Now, start off slow. So, if you're listening to me, start off really slow because uh you're gonna get a redness, a flush, it'll last anywhere between 10 to 20 minutes. But that flush is your arteries. Think of it like a fireman inside there, blowing off the uh the fat and and the uh you know the artillery uh kind of uh slack that comes on from aging. The so we need to do that. The other thing to think about is when you were born and the person you're taking care of was born, their brain was the best it was ever going to be. When you're born, you have 18.1 volts. Your brain is fully wired, a 100 billion neurobike processor. From that day forward, you started something called neuropruning, which meant that you got dumber. You weren't smarter, you just knew more. Because education doesn't mean you're smarter. You know, a lot of people, we we know a lot of people that are super educated, but they're really stupid at what they do because they only know a certain part of knowledge. The reality is the brain is like a creativity generating machine, problem solving machine.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

So join us, pull up the chair, your stronger senior eye on time. We laugh, we love, we dare we laugh, so we don't cry. Join us.