Vicious cycles of stress could be paralyzing us from fighting climate change and pandemics

For years, mass shootings have dominated headlines in the United States. Despite tragedy after tragedy occurring, it seems as if the country has got caught in a toxic, and unproductive routine, of sending “thoughts and prayers” and repeating it all again when the next crisis occurs.

The same kind of loop, fueled by burn-out and fatigue, can be applied to many of the crises and disasters the country faces at the moment like climate change, the COVID pandemic and the resurgence of fascism. While there are many theories around stress and burnout in an age where it seems like more bad is happening than good, a group of scientists have brought forth a biological perspective to this societal malaise. It’s not that people don’t want to change the status quo of tragedies, or take action against climate change as it feels like the world is on fire, but the effect of our brains being under siege by chronic stress might paralyze us from taking action.

Published in Frontiers in Science, a group of researchers suggest chronic inflammation caused by stress is affecting our collective thinking and behavior, and it’s keeping society in  a “self-sustaining cycle of societal dysfunction and environmental degradation” which is keeping us from taking action on issues like climate change and social unrest. 

Specifically, the researchers modeled a new “central inflammation map” suggesting that the brain creates its own copy of inflammation. Normally, the brain is able to manage inflammation and promote its own healing. But when it’s under chronic or high stress, the system to manage its own inflammation goes haywire and affects human cognition, emotion and behavior.

For years, researchers have known that stress is pervasive. It has been linked to physical conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, due to the inflammation it causes. The human body can undergo a stressful event temporarily. The brain is equipped to respond to it. Yoram Vodovotz, a lead author of the study and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, told Salon that when people get sick with the flu or COVID-19, it’s common to experience brain fog due to inflammation. Inflammation isn't always a bad thing. Our brains evolved this process for a reason.

But now, he said, imagine that this is happening chronically. As the brain works overtime to tamp down the chronic inflammation through so-called “controller actions,” it causes a positive feedback loop that impairs cognition function instead of promoting healing. And that can make people too mentally drained to focus on the ongoing chaos in the world. The downward spiral continues.

“Stress-impaired judgment could explain the chaotic and counter-intuitive responses of large parts of the global population to stressful events such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic,” Vodovotz said. “An inability to address these and other stressors may propagate a self-fulfilling sense of pervasive danger, causing further stress, inflammation, and impaired cognition in a runaway, positive feedback loop.”

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A second part of the hypothesis is that stress is being transmitted faster than in the past due to social media and other digital communications. 

“People are constantly bombarded with high levels of distressing information, be it the news, negative online comments, or a feeling of inadequacy when viewing social media feeds,” Vodovotz said. “We hypothesize that this new dimension of human experience, from which it is difficult to escape, is driving stress, chronic inflammation and cognitive impairment across global societies.”  

When people think about stress responses, fight or flight usually comes to mind. But in their paper, the researchers add a third response: “surrender.” 

“It's really fight, flight or surrender,” he said. “But also, at any moment, some people are doing that and some other people are becoming way over alarmed and are causing the stress that makes the other people run away.”

Just as the controllers in our brains are going haywire, the controllers in society are degrading, too, which is fueling the cycle, the researchers argue.

“However, societal norms and institutions are increasingly being questioned, at times rightly so as relics of a foregone era,” said Paul Verschure, a co-author of the article, in a press release. “The challenge today is how we can ward off a new adversarial era of instability due to global stress caused by a multi-scale combination of geopolitical fragmentation, conflicts and ecological collapse amplified by existential angst, cognitive overload, and runaway disinformation.”  

Potential solutions vary, according to the researchers, based on a person’s resilience. Vodovotz told Salon it's pretty well-established that some people are more resilient than others. For various reasons, depending on a person’s age, genetics and life experiences, they are more or less resilient to deal with chronic and acute stress.

“Preliminary results highlight the need for interventions at multiple levels and scales,” co-author Julia Arciero said. “While anti-inflammatory drugs are sometimes used to treat medical conditions associated with inflammation, we do not believe these are the whole answer for individuals.”

Instead, the authors suggested creating calming public spaces and reducing social media as part of the solution.

“The core message at the end is that this is a multiscale problem, and it's not something that you can just solve with a simplistic solution — like everybody get off your phone,” Vodovotz said. “The proper solution will probably be different for different people; what we’re asking for is people to think about this idea.”