How to Make Stress Your
Friend
by Kelly McGonigal
Kelly McGonigal is a
health psychologist, and her mission is to help people be happier and
healthier.
The study tracked
30.000 adults in the US for eight years, and they started by asking people
about stress that they have experienced and the effect of it. Then, they used
public death records to find out who died.
Some bad news first,
people who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43% increased
risk of dying, that’s for people who view stress as harmful. But, people who
experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more
likely to die. They had the lowest risk of dying, including people who had
relatively little stress.
Now the researchers
estimated that over the eight years they were tracking death, 182.000 Americans
died prematurely, its not from stress, but from the belief that stress is bad
for you. That is over 20.000 death a year.
The believing stress is bad for you has the 15th largest cause of death
in the US last year, killing more people than skin cancer, HIV/AIDS and
homicide.
In a study conducted at
Harvard University. Before the test takers went through the social stress test,
they were taught to rethink their stress response as helpful. That pounding heart is preparing them for
action. If they are breathing faster, it’s no problem. It’s getting more oxygen
to their brain. And participants who
learned to view the stress response as helpful for their performance, well,
they were less stressed out, less anxious, more confident. It means that stress
can make us healthier when we change our mind about stress.
One of the most
under-appreciated aspects of the stress response, and the idea is, stress makes
us social. To know about the side of
stress going to make us healthier is refers to oxytocin. Oxytocin doesn’t only act on our brain, it
also acts on our body. One of its main roles in our body is to protect our
cardiovascular system from the effect of stress. It’s a natural anti-inflammatory. It’s also
helps our blood vessels stay relaxed during stress. Surprisingly, all of these
physical benefits of oxytocin are enhanced by social contact and social
support.
Again, stress gives us
access to our hearts. The compassionate heart that finds joy and meaning in
connecting with others. Our pounding physical heart is working so hard to
give us strength and energy. When we
choose to view stress in this way, we are not just getting better at stress, we
are actually making a pretty profound statement. We are saying that we can trust
ourselves to handle life’s challenges. And we should remember that we don’t
have to face them alone, as long as we surrounded ourself among societies.
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