Stress is a friend. Without stress, you'd be constantly flummoxed, you'd never get anything done and you'd certainly never manage to rise to the challenges presented by an ever-changing world. Stress, or more precisely the stress hormones, cortisol and DHEA, are the keys to your ability to respond effectively to changes both within your own body and in the outside world. Without the ability to release cortisol and DHEA you would lack the behavioural flexibility that enables you to do every worthwhile thing you have ever done.

Stress, if controlled and harnessed, can provide many benefits but only if you don't let it hang around too long. Cortisol works best for you in short doses but too much cortisol over long periods can be extremely detrimental to your health. If you want to stay friends with stress and benefit from it, it's best that you don't let it outstay its welcome.

Stress in recent years has got itself a bad name. This is largely due to the fact that it is widely misunderstood. When faced with stressful situations at work most people respond by not only working harder but also by working much longer hours. Tired and irritable they gradually become more and more stressed. They start taking stress home with them, they take it to bed with them and they even take it on holiday. Lack of quality time spent with their family means that they too get stressed. With tensions mounting and tempers flaring, guess what? More time is spent at work to avoid conflict at home!

What has happened is they've unsuspectingly boarded an ever-accelerating, non-stop train with no control over its speed or where it's heading. Unable to slow it down or hop off, they just keep going, riding along on the runaway Stress Express – just to overcome a problem at work.

They have no idea as to what in their body creates stress, nor a clue as to why their brain is making them feel so stressed out. As a passenger, with no hand on the controls, they'll inevitably end up coming off the rails.

Stress heads

Stress hormones are indeed a double-edged sword. A moderate amount can truly help to improve performance by mobilizing glucose for immediate use and switching your attention systems to action stations. Large amounts on the other hand can dramatically impair performance, even in the short term.

The importance of learning to control your cortisol levels cannot be emphasized enough here. Chronic stress – high cortisol levels over long periods of time – changes your body in a very unwelcome fashion. It can make you fat, can cause muscle wasting, high blood pressure and it hobbles your immune system, leaving you vulnerable to opportunistic infections.

These, however, are all fairly minor in comparison to what it can do to your brain. Chronic stress interferes with the connectivity in Frontoparietal brain areas that constitute your Hold Line. This reduces your working memory capacity and, as a direct result, your problem-solving ability. Worse still, it increases the synapse-covered dendritic branches in your Amygdala and decreases them in your Hippocampus – shrinking your memory banks.

This all increases fear and anxiety levels to the point where high risk is perceived even where there is, in reality, very little and causes a bias in memory recall towards negative emotional events. Ultimately this can lead to such extreme risk-aversion that often the best decision isn’t made because it involves a small amount of risk. “Nothing ventured nothing gained” goes right out of the window. Only absolute certainty can be tolerated.

Cortisol the motivator

The rather unpleasant feeling of being stressed is actively created by your brain in response to the presence of stress hormones. The relay race of chemical messages that results in the release of these stress hormones occurs when the brain detects a problem that needs urgent attention.

Your Hypothalamus sits on the underside of your brain and has a structure called the Pituitary Gland hanging off the bottom of it. When a stressful situation arises your Hypothalamus sends a chemical message to your Pituitary Gland causing another hormone to set sail in your bloodstream all the way down to your Adrenal Glands which sit directly on top of each kidney. When the hormone docks with the outer layer of your Adrenal Glands a manufacturing process is started which quickly results in the release of cortisol, DHEA and the other stress hormones.

Cortisol has VIP access to every single cell in the body. Unlike most of the other chemical messengers used in the human body, cortisol is lipophilic (fat loving). This means it can mix freely with fatty substances and so pass unchallenged through cell membranes. Most chemical messengers are hydrophilic (water loving), when they hit cell membranes they are unable to pass through. The fatty bubble of membrane surrounding each cell is how your cells keep their contents safely inside and how they keep what is in the surrounding fluids out. Cortisol however slips freely through all these membranes like a ghost through walls.

Not only can cortisol enter into every single cell of your body and brain, it can also get inside the nucleus of each of your cells, the nucleus being where all your DNA resides.

The 23 pairs of coiled double spirals, one set from your Mum and one set from your Dad, is where the genetic code for every single protein required to build a human being resides. Special receptor molecules on the DNA bind to any cortisol that happens to be knocking around inside the nucleus which causes many genes to be either switched on or off – like a sound engineer pushing sliders on a mixing desk when recording a song.

The impact of hormones released into the bloodstream is so profound because they effectively switch every cell that makes up your entire body into a different mode. By orchestrating which genes are switched on and off, cortisol puts your body and brain in a mode that's best suited to deal with, and ideally remove, the source of the stress you're experiencing. This is the point that people often miss when they get stressed about being stressed. They don't realize that a little bit of stress actually helps them get things done better and gets to the bottom of the problem that is causing them stress in the first place.

Even the mildly unpleasant emotional state of being stressed is helpful – it motivates us to act; to get up and actually do something about the situation that is creating the problem. We humans are highly efficient creatures, masters at conserving energy unless spending it is really necessary. To put it another way, we're lazy!

Discomfort is an extremely effective way of motivating us into action. If we didn't get stressed, cortisol wouldn't be able to work its magic and nothing would ever get done. Cortisol induces a variety of physiological effects that together provide us with more energy. In so doing it plays a key role in enabling us to adapt to change. Cortisol enables us to mobilize resources in response to internal changes such as an increased demand for energy from your brain cells when a work deadline is due to be met. It also enables us to respond quickly to external changes like getting an unexpected call informing you that a loved one has been taken into hospital or that at very short notice you've won a weekend away.

Your brain is the most important sex organ – it's what turns you on! Your largest sex organ is your skin – all 1.8 m²of it – the size of a single bed sheet. And sex happens to be one of the best antidotes to stress.

Cortisol in action

At times we all worry and end up getting stressed out about things that we shouldn't. They are either: things that turn out to be figments of our imagination, or that are real but beyond our control. The reason for unnecessarily stressing is because of our brains inability to distinguish between what is real and what is vividly imagined – no matter how ludicrous in the light of day those imagined events may seem!

Your brain makes little distinction between what is real and controllable, and what it believes is actually causing perceived problems, often based on flawed assumptions.

As soon as you start to give something a lot of serious thought, whether it be real, imagined, within your control or not, your cortisol will swing into action. That's why when you suddenly wake up in the middle of a horrific nightmare your heart is pounding and your breathing is short and rapid.

Give this a go. Close your eyes and imagine that having just cut a fresh lemon in half, you're now holding one half of it in your hand. Bring this juicy half up to your nose and take a really big sniff. Notice how strong its citrus smell is. Now squeeze as much juice as possible out of it into a tablespoon and hold the tablespoon near your mouth in readiness to drink the contents. Now very slowly, without spilling any, bring the spoon closer and closer to your mouth. Get ready to drink, open your mouth – and stop! Chances are, your brain has ordered extra saliva be produced in your mouth in an attempt to dilute the citric acid – a real physiological response based on an imagined sensory scenario.

Holding back the pain

As well as regulating the amount of available energy to meet changing demands, cortisol also has an enormous impact on your body's defence systems. Upon detecting an invading lurgy, your ever alert immune system will immediately spring into action. The trouble is, in using all the weapons at its disposal to fight it off, it will more than likely cause some discomfort, possibly pain, and at the same time make you feel unwell as your energy is sapped in the struggle to repel the uninvited invader. For example, in combating a throat infection your immune system's attacks on it will create swelling, making it painful to swallow and leaving you feeling under the weather.

In times of crisis, when you really do need to get on with something, cortisol temporarily holds back your immune system from getting fully stuck in until whatever it is you need to get done has been done. It sends a powerful message to your disease defence system that says: “Now is not the time for me to feel ill, I can't afford to – now go away!” Fighting disease with our vast armies of immune cells is an extremely energy consuming activity. By postponing your immune system response all available energies can be channelled into dealing with the pressing matter at hand.

It is hardly surprising then that performers, despite suffering from a multitude of ailments, manage to get up on stage, forget about all their aches and pains, and deliver great performances. It's also not surprising why most self-employed people will tell you that the best cure for flu is to go self-employed!

Pathetic is good

The helplessness that we exhibit when we fall ill is actually a behavioural set piece that is switched on by our immune system to prevent us from wasting energy moving around and fretting over the concerns of everyday life. Feeling and acting pathetic when ill helps us to conserve valuable energy so that it can be invested in the singular pursuit of conquering invading bugs and infections.

Who's driving your train?

Travelling on the Stress Express is not a problem providing, that is, YOU are the one doing the driving. If you want to regard stress as a friend and fully utilize the many positives that it has to offer, you must be the one that decides when and where you slow down, when and where you stop and when and where you get off. In other words you and not the outside world must be the one in control, running your life.

Rest stops along the line are extremely important. There are several different categories of rest that you should consider – each of them vital in terms not only of reducing cortisol levels, but also permitting important cellular maintenance work to take place to keep your body and brain working well on the timescales of days, years and decades.

Taking small bite-size periods of time out throughout the day helps you get through each week better. Ensuring that your weekends, or whatever days off you get, allow time for some periods of total rest will help you get through each month more effectively. As well as these, what really does help is if you take a stress-free holiday each year. It will allow your overworked brain to do some deep cleaning and seriously needed repair work. An uneventful or even boring holiday is perfect in this regard!

Reducing cortisol with laughter

Laughter reduces stress by, amongst many useful things, reducing levels of cortisol. It is an invaluable tool when used appropriately during stressful interactions at work and at home. Making a carefully timed comment that causes people to laugh doesn't just reduce your own cortisol levels it also brings down levels in those around you too.

Laughter involves many different regions across your whole brain – particularly your brain stem and more or less every stop on the Limbic Line.

Periods of rest where you can fully unwind are essential if you want to ensure that your brain rises to major challenges in the months ahead. They will help to ensure they are dealt with to the best of your ability and without causing any long-term damage to your health.

Your brain may be the most sophisticated piece of bio-ware in the known universe but expecting it to work at its absolute maximum all of the time is just wishful thinking bordering on bonkers.

Like all engines, it needs maintaining and that takes time. Expecting it to carry out running repair work whilst working flat out would be like expecting someone to re-tarmac a high street in rush hour without redirecting the traffic. Imagine it: a convoy of lorries, vans, cars, bikes and pedestrians all in a big hurry to get from A to B whilst a maintenance crew are scurrying around between the vehicles trying to do some much needed road works. The best you could expect would be to fill the odd pot hole here and there. Well that's just what it's like for your brain when you're expecting it to run at 100% a 100% of the time and, at the same time, stay in tip-top, fully maintained, working order! If you want to get the best out of it, running repairs on the job will only keep it performing well for a limited period of time. Before long, it'll begin to go past the point-of-no-return and you'll slowly begin to conk out. If you really do want it to deliver on demand and put in peak performances over a period of decades, it needs time to catch up, it needs to rest and repair properly.

Whenever you stop moving around torn muscles can be rebuilt, food in the stomach can be properly broken down so that nutrients and building blocks can be absorbed into the bloodstream and old bone cells can be gobbled up by special immune cells to make way for stronger healthier new ones. On top of all this, repairs can be carried out on your organs to make sure they are able to function fully and efficiently perform their specific roles. This kind of maintenance is very important for your body, but it's extremely important for your one and only brain. On a day-to-day basis it will of course do whatever it can in the natural lulls, repainting the road markings and relaying cracked paving slabs, but you would be well advised to actively create restful gaps between your rush hours of mental activity, wherever possible.

GOM Time

Once or twice a day I take a couple of minutes out just to pause, step back, relax and focus on what lies ahead. I call it GOM Time, GOM being the Tibetan word for mediation. All I do is sit somewhere quiet and take a few deep breaths in and out whilst picturing whatever it is that I next need to be getting on with. I use a very effective, quick and well-known technique called “7–11 Breathing” whereby you simply breathe in whilst counting to seven and breathe out counting to eleven.

The key is to breathe out longer than you breathe in. I find it really helps to un-clutter my busy mind and it certainly helps me to be more productive. I use it to “power up” so I'm ready for the next big challenge or to “power down.” For example: when I'm driving home having spoken at a conference, I pull into a lay-by just down the road from where I live and allow myself some GOM Time. I do this to try to bring my spinning head down from travelling at a thousand miles an hour so that when I do step through my front door it's going at a much slower pace and I'm able to enjoy precious time with my family. And, to help make sure there's no stress tagging along behind, I leave my luggage in the car and come and get it later, when I've completely unwound.

– Adrian

“Trying” to get to sleep

“Trying” to “do” anything involves different areas of your brain working together to perform a task. You cannot try to go to sleep because trying suggests effort, which is the complete opposite of what happens when you fall asleep!

“Allowing” your brain to “fall” asleep is a better way of thinking about it and the mind-set that facilitates this process is all about surrender. Getting frustrated that you cannot get to sleep is the worst thing you can do, because frustration is an active not a passive process. Instead of slipping into neutral, you're revving up your brain.

As well as the obvious ones like never drinking coffee just before going to bed, if you do have difficulty sleeping and are badly in need of a good night's rest, then there are several things you can do to help your brain. The first thing is to begin to think of your bedroom as an environment that must be completely free of any unnatural stimulation, especially electrical. If you watch television in bed just before you “try” to fall asleep you are making your brain more active at exactly the time when you should be making it passive. If you use the internet in your bedroom just before you sleep, again you're getting it all revved up and stimulated when it should be winding down and drifting into sleep mode by being bored into submission! The only activities that should ever take place in your bedroom at night are sleep and sex.

That way, after a few weeks of training, your brain will begin to subconsciously associate that particular room with peaceful slumber. Eventually, the moment you think about going to bed, even before you've crossed the threshold into your bedroom, it will start going through the processes of shutting itself down.

Sixty crucial minutes

One thing you can do to help is make sure you don't do anything that requires your brain or body to do any work in the crucial sixty minutes before bedtime. Make sure you've eaten well in advance so that you are not all bloated and trying to digest a big meal when you get into bed. Make sure any exercise (apart from sex) is taken as early in the evening as possible so that all the stimulating adrenaline that gets triggered by it has had a chance to be cleared out of your system. And, if you shower or have a bath, also do that a good hour or so before hitting the sack.

The key problem with exercising or having a hot shower or bath before you sleep is that your brain needs to cool in preparation for entering the sleep state. Blood vessels in the hands and feet dilate to help radiate heat away to bring core temperature down, which in turn cools your brain. If you create a lot of heat through exercise, absorb it from bathing or, produce it in your stomach in the process of digesting food, it makes it difficult for brains to get into sleep mode. If you're not a sound sleeper – it really does pay to make the last hour of your day as dull as possible!

This one may seem obvious but it is a real sleep killer for most couples. Do not, under any circumstances, initiate heavy conversations about serious topics just before bedtime; it's much better to discuss them elsewhere in the day. Better still find a set hour at the weekend during which, on a weekly basis, you take turns voicing your frustrations, worries and concerns. Upsetting, distressing, worrying or emotional subjects obviously need, at times, to be discussed and there is never really a good time to broach them. However, the very worst time to lock horns over things such as relationship difficulties, family arguments and money is just before bedtime as it gets your brain activity and cortisol levels up when sleep needs them to go down. Avoid pre-bedtime stress-inducing conversations like the plague. Through getting a good rest, your brain will work a lot better for you the next day.

The last sixty minutes of the day must, if you want to get a good night's sleep, be as stress free as possible.

Nocturnal rewards

A few years ago I found myself constantly waking up in the middle of the night and was finding it almost impossible to get back to sleep. My lack of sleep began to have a huge detrimental effect on me. As I continued over a period of months to struggle with my reoccurring nocturnal problem, I was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate at work; l lacked energy, felt lethargic and became increasingly short tempered and ratty with people around me. It became, and please excuse the pun here, an ongoing, living nightmare. I used to do a whole variety of things to try to make myself feel tired and hopefully get back to sleep. I'd sit up and read books, go and get a drink, watch TV, make myself something to eat, take a bath or even on some occasions, go out for a middle-of-the-night stroll. I'd do practically anything if I thought it was going to result in me being in the same enviable position that the rest of my family were in – fast asleep!

None of these things I tried ever worked. Then one day someone gave me an absolute gem of a tip. They explained that all the things I was doing to try to get back to sleep were the very reason why I was waking up in the first place. By doing all those leisurely, enjoyable things in the middle of the night, I was rewarding my brain for waking me. They advised me that if I didn't want to continue to wake up every night, the best thing to do the next time I woke was to get up and do something that I hated doing, like cleaning the oven or washing a floor. I tried it. I got up and cleaned the oven. Apart from the odd occasion, I can honestly say I've not unintentionally woken up on a regular basis since.