Stress can make us stronger, smarter, and happier – if we learn how to open our minds to it.
Not all stress is bad. Take a breath.
Stress can actually be beneficial for brain health and life skills, at least “moderate” stress.
The University of Georgia, who does a lot of cool research like showing that making love boosts healthy testosterone levels in both men and women, which I wrote about in my last book SEXY BRAIN, is at it again… relieving our angst.
These researchers found that “low” and “moderate” levels of stress can help individuals develop resilience and reduce the risk of developing mental health disorders, like depression and antisocial behaviors.
“Vitamin R”, or resilience, is really a critical nutrient for making your way in life. Being “doughy” in body, mind, and spirit, is a state of nutrient deficiency that often, on many levels, can hold you back.
Low and moderate stress can also help individuals to cope with future stressful encounters.
The stress that comes from taking more courses, pulling longer hours to close any deal or write papers or a book, and holding more jobs to make more money, can all potentially lead to personal growth.
Pushing yourself sanely, not crazily.
But as I have said for years, you are not a China cup. I have noticed that those that lick their wounds way too fastidiously, often get weaker over time, rather than stronger.
Good stress, it turns out, helps you cope with bad stress.
The researchers relied on data from the Human Connectome Project, a national project funded by the National Institutes of Health. This project is all about figuring out how the human brain works. And how to keep it healthier.
They analyzed the project's data from more than 1,200 young adults who reported their “perceived” stress levels. They used research questionnaires that measure how uncontrollable and stressful people find their lives.
Stress often comes from feelings of being out of control, overwhelmed, worrying about money, worrying about health, arguing and struggling in relationships, or feeling there is never enough time most of the time.
Participants answered questions about how frequently they experienced certain thoughts or feelings, such as "in the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly?" and "in the last month, how often have you found that you could not cope with all the things that you had to do?"
Their neuro-cognitive abilities were then assessed. This was done by measuring attention and ability to suppress automatic responses to visual stimuli; cognitive flexibility, or ability to switch between tasks; picture sequence memory, which involves remembering an increasingly long series of objects; working memory and processing speed. All ways of assessing how your brain is working.
Moderate levels of stress were found to be psychologically beneficial.
Moderate stress protected against developing mental health symptoms.
The old saying, ”that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” turns out to be right.
But the ability to tolerate stress varies between you to me.
Things like age, genetic predispositions, having a supportive community to fall back on in times of need, and how you have had stress and dealt with it in your past, all play a part in how you handle challenges.
But the line between the right amount of stress and too much stress is a thin one.
While a little stress can be good for cognition, continued levels of “high” stress can be incredibly damaging, to the body, mind, and spirit.
At a tipping point, stress becomes toxic. This point varies for all of us. But how we have lived influences how we face and use or “milk” our past stressors to deal with our “now”.
Chronic “severe” stressors, like poverty, physical abuse, severe nutrient deficiencies, chronic consumption of ultra-processed foods like bread, candies, fries, and chips, lack of exercise (I added those last several points, can ya tell?), etc., can have serious adverse effects. On many levels. Such as psychological consequences, dampening immunity, weakening emotional regulation, shrinking brain health, and prompting us to act less humanely and perhaps even violently.
Are these shootings and violence we are seeing, products of ongoing severe stress, or at least how those individuals experienced their own stress spin out of control? Or due to these individuals not being taught to embrace stress and discipline and healthful choices, rather than abuse medications and/or alcohol and drugs?
I use many moments in life to build up reserves of Vitamin R. I speed walk from the car to Home Depot. Speed walking positively stresses the body. I encourage myself to connect with strangers, go canoeing past my comfort zone, write more papers, and commit to more lectures, books, and projects.
I want to keep going… so I just keep going.
This is good moderate stress. In action.
We hear from so many today that younger folks are more “lazy” and simply won’t push themselves. Or pay attention beyond themselves.
There seems to be a lack of cultural oomph to embrace the “work ethic” or shall we rename it as the positive “stress ethic”?
We need to get the message out that moderate stress is healthy.
It does make us stronger and saner.
You are not a China cup!
Reference:
Is perceived stress linked to enhanced cognitive functioning and reduced risk for psychopathology? Testing the hormesis hypothesis. Psychiatry Research, 2022; 314: 114644 DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2022.114644