“Stress is bad for health” is a message we constantly hear. And it is true: stress can be harmful and lead to a series of ills, especially when it becomes chronic and relentless.
But it turns out that certain types of stress can lead to growth opportunities and, according to a doctor and author of the new book “The Paradox of Stress: Why do you need stress to live harder, more health and happiness,” their right amount can be crucial to our well-being.
“Yes, a lot of stress harms us, but the lack of it is equally harmful,” said Sharon Bergquist to the corresponding chief of chief of CNN Sanjay Gupta, recently, in his podcast “Chasing Life”.
Bergquist, assistant professor at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta and founder and director of Emory Lifestyle Medicine & Wellness, knows stress well. As a child, she lived the Iranian revolution and her family was forced to flee.
“We were on the last plane from before (Iranian leader Ruhollah) Khomeini arrived,” she recalled. “The airport was incredibly crowded. I remember the whole process of trying to go through the safety and mass of people who were there and how we got to the track-every step of it.”
His family fled to England and eventually settled in the United States. But life in the West was not exactly stressed free either. “In the eighth series, I couldn’t write a paragraph in English without much difficulty. I took all night,” she said. Even so, he managed to prosper, graduate from the class in high school, attend Yale University at graduation and then the Harvard Medical School.
Bergquist’s childhood experiences planted the seeds for their interest in stress. “In the end, this triggered this obsession with me to understand why some people grow up and thrive with these experiences? And others not?” She said. She says she was very interested in the question of whether all stress is harmful.
According to Bergquist research, it depends on the type and amount of stress to which a person is exposed.
“I work with many professionals who are very determined, but are also in love with what they do,” she said, noting that they take lives that can be considered “stressful.” It includes between them.
“I call it a good stress, which I think has a very different effect on our bodies than the harmful stress that has become almost synonymous with what people describe as” stress, “she said. “Now I can say with a comfortable level that this kind of stress (the good) releases a biochemical profile that actually promotes health: we free, for example, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin.”
Dopamine comes from the reward for doing something significant, she explained. Serotonin comes from the joy that comes from realization and oxytocin comes from contributing to the greater good.
She said the “bad” stress is unpredictable, inevitable and not brief or intermittent, but chronic. Our biochemical response to this type of stress is to release cortisol, which eventually leads to harmful effects on our bodies such as high blood pressure.
This trio of chemicals released when we face the good stress “mitigates our level of cortisol. Literally builds our resilience to stress,” she said.
Resilience is like a muscle: it is dynamic and needs to be challenged to get stronger.
“The key, really, is that our answers to stress are there to help us. They are there to help us adapt to our world,” she said, noting that throughout human history this is how humans survived and thrive.
“But the things that help us activate these answers to stress have been removed from the fabric of our lives,” she said. We no longer need to face environmental stressors such as food scarcity and exposure to heat and cold extremes.
“The introduction of many of these amenities has removed our connection with the natural environment we live in,” she said. Consequently, “we are essentially harming ourselves because we are not allowing our bodies to do what they are so capable of doing.”
What can you do to introduce good stress into your life? Bergquist has five tips.
Not much, no stress
“Challenge yourself to get out of your comfort zone without being overwhelmed,” Bergquist said by email.
“Good stress is a medicine. And like any medicine, the dose determines the answer,” she explained. “Growth from stress happens when it is in a hormical zone, or gold curly zone – an appropriate amount that is neither much nor.”
In other words, it forces to enter the water and swim, but do not drown.
Tune with self-interstogrity
“Are you challenging yourself in ways that align with your beliefs? Or conflict with them?” Asked Bergquist.
“Your heart and mind know the difference,” she said. “Persevere in situations where you feel stuck or disconnected from your values can become a harmful way of stress.”
“Good stress is not simply about positively re -adjusting stress in our lives,” she said. “But to take action deliberately with significant challenges and purpose -oriented challenges as an antidote to chronic stressors that we cannot control or avoid.”
For example, she said, she may involve accepting or creating a job opportunity aligned with your values or learning a skill that you consider rewarding.
Be strategic about recovery
“To grow from stress, you need to book time for rest and recovery,” said Bergquist.
“Under stress, your body changes to a way where you keep energy and do internal maintenance,” she said. “When you recover, your brain and body reshape and build new connections that prepare you best for future challenges.”
The recovery, Bergquist said, is as important as good stress for benefits.
“Even good stress can accumulate and become harmful without recovery.”
Enjoy the connection between your mind and your body
“Physically stressing can help build mental resilience and vice versa,” said Bergquist. “It’s a remarkable process called cross adaptation.”
“When you experience good physical or psychological stress, you repair and regenerate your cells, which makes each part of your body healthier and stronger,” she explained.
You can build mental resilience, for example, stressing yourself physically (in a good way) doing things like “eating plant-based foods with stress resistance, exercising vigorously, exposing yourself briefly to heat and cold, and intermittently fasting through time restriction feed,” she said. “We have many tools to manage stress and decrease your damage.”
Trust that you were made for some stress
Experiencing stress is not a failure – it’s a feature. “Our human history is a stress overcoming – and to become stronger because of it,” said Bergquist.
“Through repeated cycles of stress and recovery, we call our natural ability. It’s a gift we inherited in our DNA,” she said. “Resilience is a muscle we can all build, no matter where we are or what we are facing. It’s normal to have fears. And it’s normal to want to avoid challenges.
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This content was originally published in see five tips for using stress in favor of your health on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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