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Stress can cause acute and chronic changes in certain brain areas which can cause long-term damage. [4] Over-secretion of stress hormones most frequently impairs long-term delayed recall memory, but can enhance short-term, immediate recall memory. This enhancement is particularly relative in emotional memory.
Stress also increases insulin resistance, which can spike your blood sugar and cause weight gain, adds Alexander. "Acute stress isn't going to do that, but chronic stress can."
Second is the "diminished attentional capacity" hypothesis, which means that older people engage less in self-initiated encoding due to reduced attentional capacity. The third reason is the "memory self-efficacy," which indicates that older people do not have confidence in their own memory performances, leading to poor consequences. [ 17 ]
Anxiety disorders — characterized by uneasiness, worry, and fear — can cause various symptoms that affect how you think and behave. This can include changes in appetite (aka your body’s ...
For example, students who are taking exams show weaker immune responses if they also report stress due to daily hassles. [45] While responses to acute stressors typically do not impose a health burden on young, healthy individuals, chronic stress in older or unhealthy individuals may have long-term effects that are detrimental to health. [46]
Older people may feel less violent stomach contractions when they get hungry, but still suffer the secondary effects resulting from low food intake: these include weakness, irritability and decreased concentration. Prolonged lack of adequate nutrition also causes increased susceptibility to disease and reduced ability for the body to heal. [7] [8]
If older adults have fewer attentional resources than younger adults, we would expect that when two tasks must be carried out at the same time, older adults' performance will decline more than that of younger adults. However, a large review of studies on cognition and aging suggest that this hypothesis has not been wholly supported. [56]
Theories of a proposed stress–illness link suggest that both acute and chronic stress can cause illness, and studies have found such a link. [58] According to these theories, both kinds of stress can lead to changes in behavior and in physiology. Behavioral changes can involve smoking and eating habits and physical activity.