Eliminate sugar, don’t be sedentary, avoid stress — these are our modern-day health “commandments.” But are these things we’re told we must eliminate really only bad for us? After all, sugars — especially those naturally derived from fruits — can have wonderful health benefits. Periods of inactivity can breed some of our most creative thinking, closest social bonding and most mindful living. And stress is a necessary ingredient in some of life’s greatest treasures — raising children, maintaining a rewarding career and accomplishing bucket list fitness goals. As American psychiatrist Theodore Isaac Rubin said, “Happiness does not come from doing easy work, but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.” Happiness, it seems, requires stress.
[See: 11 Simple, Proven Ways to Optimize Your Mental Health.]
Of course, not all stress is good, and chronic, poorly-managed stress seems to aggravate those diseases most likely to kill you: cancer, heart disease and diabetes. But by changing how you think about stress — even embracing some of it — you can ultimately impact your long-term health. Here are four research-backed ways stress can be used to your advantage:
1. Stress is less likely to shorten your life if you don’t interpret it as harmful.
In a now-famous TED talk, health psychologist Kelly McGonigal reveals a study that made her rethink her entire approach to stress. The study tracked 30,000 American adults for eight years and centered around two questions: “How much stress have you experienced in the last year?” and “Do you believe that stress is harmful for your health?” No matter how much stress people had experienced in the last year, only those who believed stress was harmful to their health had a significantly increased risk of dying over those eight years. People who didn’t view stress as harmful, by contrast, had the lowest risk of dying over the given period — regardless of their actual stress levels. Changing your mind about stress can change your body’s response to it.
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2. Stressful events are unlikely to damage your health if you tend to get over them rather than ruminate about them.
New findings published in Psychological Science reveal that lingering negative emotions in response to a stressor are associated with a greater number of health problems — including chronic illnesses, functional impairments and difficulties with everyday tasks — a decade later. This means that people’s physical health isn’t simply based on the number or magnitude of stressors they are exposed to, but how negative they feel the next day. The thinking is that those who aren’t able to let the negative feelings go will either experience greater activation of stress-related systems in the body, or develop poor health behaviors over time. Either way, it’s not the stressful event that leads to bad physical outcomes, but the lifespan of the negative feelings that result from it. The event is neutral; it’s our response to it that matters.
3. Stress can boost your memory.
Anxiety can help people remember things, a University of Waterloo study of 80 undergraduate students found. In it, researchers measured participants’ anxiety levels and then gave them a memory test. They found that while high levels of anxiety could lead to a negative coloring of otherwise neutral memories, manageable levels of anxiety actually helped people recall the details of events. “To some degree,” said study co-author Myra Fernandes in a press release, “there is an optimal level of anxiety that is going to benefit your memory.”
[See: 8 Ways to Relax — Now.]
4. Stress can enhance performance.
When viewed the right way, stress can be a performance enhancer. Studies that compare professionals with amateurs in fields like music and sports show that professionals feel as much anxiety as amateurs. The difference is in how they interpret their anxiety. The amateurs view it as detrimental (“Uh oh, the butterflies are back — get out of here! Leave! I can’t play well with you here!”), while the professionals tend to view stress as energizing (“OK, this means I’m ready. Time to focus.”). Similar results are seen in test-taking situations. In one experiment, half the students received a statement before taking a test noting that “people who feel anxious during a test might actually do better” and that they should simply remind themselves of that if they start to feel anxious while taking it. Just reading this statement significantly improved students’ performance on both the lab-based test and their real GRE test a few months later. And, it had nothing to do with the statement having a calming effect on the students: Saliva samples taken moments before the test began reveal these students’ stress levels were actually higher than those who hadn’t read the statement. The biological stress was real, but how they interpreted it helped them channel it advantageously.
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Stress Isn’t Killing Us — but Stressing About It Might Be originally appeared on usnews.com
