The Perfect Amount of Stress

Stress is a killer and a life force. How can you tell the good from the bad, and too little from too much?
By Thea Singer, published on March 13, 2012 - last reviewed on February 25, 2014

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Your company's revenues are shrinking. Your kids need bracesand hundreds of thousands of
dollars for college just down the road. Your aging father has landed in the hospital again. And
now that idiot driver on your left is swerving into your lane as he yaks on his cell phone. You
might just snap.
Stress, when it's chronic or repeated, does more than unnerve us; it can make us physically sick.
It dampens the immune system and dries out the digestive tract, setting the stage for disorders
from irritable bowel syndrome to ulcerative colitis. It impairs memory and in extreme cases fuels
anxiety. It can even gnaw away at the ends of chromosomes, thereby accelerating cellular aging.
It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that this villain is alsoparadoxicallya wellspring of
life. Without stress, we'd be as good as dead. We wouldn't have the gumption to slalom down

Whistler's mountains to Olympic gold, to play Juliet to our Romeo, to ask the boss for a raise, or
even to get out of bed.
That's because stress in appropriate amounts is the very stimulation that keeps us engaged with
the world moment to moment.
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When the brain perceives a stimulus, the sympathetic nervous system kicks into gear. It tells the
adrenal glands to release the first stress hormone, epinephrine (aka adrenaline). Epinephrine
dilates the bronchial tubes in the lungs to make space for more oxygen and charges the heart,
enabling more blood to push through. It dilates the blood vessels leading away from the heart,
too, so that oxygenated blood can flow freely to where it's needed most: the brain and the
muscles, which must be ready to flee or fight.
Next, the hormone norepinephrine spurts from the nerve endings of the sympathetic nervous
system. Norepinephrine constricts the veins leading to the heart so returning blood can slam
more powerfully into the chamber and exit with even more force. It constricts the arteries leading
to the skin, too, to slow down bleeding in the event of an injury.

Jamie Chung

Finally, the thirdand majorstress hormone, cortisol, joins the party, also emanating from the
adrenal glands, to mobilize cells' stored energy and to keep the rations coming for the duration of
the stressor. In nonemergency situations, cortisol follows the body's circadian rhythms: It's
highest in the early morningtime to wake upand lowest at night.
"Our goal isn't a life without stress," Stanford University neurobiologist Robert M. Sapolsky
says. "The idea is to have the right amount of stress." That means stressors that are short-lived
and manageable.
You experience good stress when you feel a sense of control over the event in question. No
matter how your body may respond in the moment, you know you're going to come out fine on
the other sideand perhaps even better for the experience. A roller coaster ride may send your
stress-hormone levels soaring, but you know the ride will be over in minutes. Sapolsky explains
this as "voluntarily relinquishing a degree of control and predictability in a setting that is
benevolent overall."
Duration is key, but so is your perception of the external event, says psychologist Wendy Berry
Mendes, of the University of California, San Francisco. Do you frame the stressor as a challenge
or a threat?
Imagine you're waiting in the wings before a presentation, flipping through your Powerpoint
slides in your mind's eye. You know you can do this! Epinephrine shoots into your system;

norepinephrine follows, but in lesser amounts. Your heart rate increases, your hands get warm,
your eyes light up. Cortisol inches up. This is challenge stress. You're ready to fly.
"A challenge response [physiologically] looks a lot like aerobic activity," says Mendes. Sex is a
form of challenge stress. And good things come from challenge stress, including the growth of
new brains cells. Resistance exercise also qualifies as a challenge stress, when it's not overdone.
Mark A. Tarnopolsky, a muscle metabolism and neuromuscular disease specialist at McMaster
University Medical Centre, in Hamilton, Ontario, has found that pumping iron can shift the
genetic profile of old muscles to that of younger ones.
But consider a scenario wherein you're so worried about the presentation you can't sleep the
night before. The lack of sleep leaves your amygdala on high alert. Moments before the talk,
you're still mentally flipping those Powerpoint slides, but you can't make out the images.
Norepinephrine has beaten out epinephrine, causing more constriction than dilation of your
blood vessels. Your heart rate increases, but less blood is pushed to the brain and body. Cortisol
gushes. Your hands go cold and your mind goes blank. This is "threat" stress. Your presentation
may be toast.
The story worsens if the threat continuesthat is, if the stress becomes chronic. Then you
experience what neuroendocrinologist Bruce McEwen of The Rockefeller University, in New
York City, calls toxic stressyou're overwhelmed and feel out of control. "Things are coming at
you left and right," he says. "You can't keep up with them. There is the danger of developing a
sort of 'learned helplessness' "that is, not even trying to cope anymore because you feel there is
no point. "The more threatened you feel, the less capable you feel," says McEwen, "and the
worse your physiology is going to be as a result."
A Tipping Point?

Is there an identifiable tipping pointa place where, through physiological cues, we know that
we've slipped past good stress and into the danger zone? When it comes to the performance of
specific tasks, there is.

Jamie Chung

In the first phase of the stress response, when just epinephrine and norepinephrine are flowing,
performance improves continuously as levels of the two hormones increase, whether the
challenge is mental (you're taking a math test) or physical (you're parachuting out of a plane).
But once cortisol joins the party, everything changes.

For years, stress researchers have noted a relationship between levels of cortisol and the ability to
remember things, in particular, those with an emotional component. Increased levels of cortisol
affect memory in a hill-shaped curve: Increased cortisol boosts the ability to rememberup to
the top of the hill. But after that point, memory decreases as cortisol levels continue to climb.
Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing. If you're stressed and your memory starts to go,
you know you've crossed the line.
That curve has a name: The Yerkes-Dodson law. It was established a century ago when the two
eponymous psychologists traced how electric shocks to mice affected their ability to avoid a
black box.

Jamie Chung

Why does Yerkes-Dodson swing into action when cortisol arrives? In the early stages of a
stressor, cortisol attaches to receptors in the hippocampus that enhance memory formation;
they're called mineralocorticoid receptors. But if the stressor continues, the memory-enhancing
receptors fill up, and the cortisol attaches to a different type of receptorone that disrupts
memory; this is a glucocorticoid receptor.
Indeed, a long-term surplus of cortisol in the brain can cause dendrites in the hippocampus to
wither. Think of a dendrite as an old-fashioned telephone line: It's a fiber-like projection at the
end of a brain cell that receives electrical messages from other brain cells. Retract that line and
you muck up the message.
What's a Stressed-Out Person To Do?

Given the physiological realities, the Holy Grail of stress management would be to identify the
optimal amount of stress for every individual.

Jamie Chung

Yet there is no uniform right amount of stress. Each of us has a different stress thresholdthat
is, the degree of stress needed to benefit or harm usdepending on our history and even our
genetic makeup. For sure, there are events that are universally rated high stress: you lose your
job or a loved one, a tropical storm floods your basement, you are in the midst of a messy
divorce. But what matters most regarding health and even longevity is not the event itself but
how you respond to it. And how you respondemotionally and physiologicallydepends on
how you perceive it.
Consider the flood scenario: You come home from an afternoon out amid torrents of rain. Water
is rising in your basement as high as your desk top. Your husband is pacing and cursing, his
blood pressure is through the roof. "We're in big trouble," he mutters. He can't think straight. His
hands are clammy, his breath is shallow. He's headed toward hypertension, or worse.
You, on the other hand, feel your heart rate pick up. Your vision clears. You know what to do!
You jump back in your car and race to Home Depot, where you grab the last portable pump from
the shelf. Home again, you plug in the contraption, attaching a rubber hose that extends up the
basement stairs and into the street. You feel a glow as water gushes out of the house.

Jamie Chung

Our perceptions spring from our disposition, which arises from our history and our genes.
Whereas emotions and mood are fluid, dispositions are more fixed. Someone who's generally
anxious is likely to see a stressor as a threat, while someone who's resilient will see that same
stressor as a challenge. In the anxious person, the prefrontal cortexthe seat of executive
functionmay be less well-developed and thus have less control over the amygdala and its
access to fear memories.
"People who are prone to anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, or depression have
imbalances in those circuits and their underlying chemistry," says McEwen. "And that makes
them react to a situation in a more anxious way than another person. So, the idea of how much
stress is too much is as much an internal or individual problem as anything else."
Yet, regardless of your upbringing or personality, there is good news: Science has shown that we
can all alter our perceptions. We can, with training, transform a threat into a challenge. We can
even stressproof our brain, raising our overall stress threshold. And when stressors subside, most
of the damageretracting dendrites, for example, or an overgrown amygdalacan be reversed.
We can improve our overall health and add years to our lives.

Jamie Chung

A new study led by UC San Francisco's Mendes shows one way to do this: by reappraising our
own physiological responses. How we interpret a racing heart and quickened breath can
determine whether we'll experience good or bad stress.
Mendes and colleagues found that subjects who were prepped to interpret stress-related
physiological responses as positive had increased cardiac efficiency and more blood-vessel
dilation than those who were either prepped to ignore a stressor or not prepped at all. In other
words, whether the subjects experienced challenge stress (warm hands, alert brain) or threat
stress (cold hands, mind blank) depended on their appraisal of their own physical state.
"In both of those cases, you're experiencing increased arousal," Mendes says. "But there's a fork
in the road: You can shift to a more positive response to the stressor. You activate which way
you're going to go."

Jamie Chung

So the next time you are beside yourself about a big presentationor any onerous task
consider how Mendes's subjects handled a speech delivered to two scowling evaluators. One
group of subjects read articles about how physiological responses to stressors aid performance,
another read articles about how ignoring stressors was most helpful (they were told to look away
from the frowning evaluators), and the third didn't read any articles beforehand.
The benefits of the first group's reappraisal extended beyond their ability to wow an audience.
Those prepped to interpret their racing hearts as positive adopted a glass-half-full frame of mind:
In a test, they were less likely to latch onto negative words such as "failure" and "fear."
Mendes calls her paper, appropriately, "Mind Over Matter," and leads it off with a prescient
quote from American psychologist and philosopher William James. "The greatest weapon against
stress is our ability to choose one thought over another," James wrote.
Can you feel your blood pressure dropping already?

Jamie Chung

8 Steps to Stress-Proof Your Day

Reinterpret a negative experience Say you leave your headphones in the car when you go to
the gym. Interpret the return trip to the car not as an irritant but as a chance to warm up before
you even climb on the treadmill.
Give to someone else Doing something nice for others can make you happier and calmer, studies
show.
Jot down attainable goals for the week and aim to achieve one every day. This is a great way to
track what's going right.
Build social support Brain scans show that the same circuitry fires up when we feel emotional
pain as when we feel physical pain. But that circuitry is slower to react in those with greater
social support in their daily lives.
Notice at least one good thing you experience each day. Then make it "real" by telling someone
about it or writing it down. The event can be as small as getting out of bed on time.
Meditate Meditation can actually alter our brains, increasing gray matter in regions associated
with emotion regulation and dampening activity in the fear-responsive amygdala.
Get enough sleep Sleep deprivation is one of the greatest angst inducersit causes stress
hormones to soar and sparks other imbalances.
Exercise regularly Exercise works as a mild or "good" stressor: One hundred and fifty minutes
of moderate intensity exercise a week is linked with both reduced stress levels and increased
growth of new brain cells.
How Stressed Do You Feel?

The following questions pertain to your feelings and thoughts during the last month. In each
case, circle how often you felt or thought a certain way.
0 = Never
1 = Almost Never
2 = Sometimes
3 = Fairly Often
4 = Very Often

1. In the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened
unexpectedly?
0

2. In the last month, how often have you felt that you were unable to control the important things
in your life?
0

3. In the last month, how often have you felt nervous and stressed?
0

4. In the last month, how often have you felt confident about your ability to handle your personal
problems?
0

5. In the last month, how often have you felt that things were going your way?
0

6. In the last month, how often have you found that you could not cope with all the things that
you had to do?
0

7. In the last month, how often have you been able to control irritations in your life?
0

8. In the last month, how often have you felt that you were on top of things?
0

9. In the last month, how often have you been angered because of things that were outside of
your control?
0

10. In the last month, how often have you felt difficulties were piling up so high that you could
not overcome them?
0

Calculating your score:

1. Take your responses to questions 4, 5, 7, and 8 and reverse each one. That is, if you circled 0,
give the response the value of 4; if you circled 1, give the response the value of 3; and so on: 2 =
2, 3 = 1, 4 = 0. Add up the reversed values.
2. Add up your responses to the remaining questions: 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10. 3. Add the sums from (1)
and (2) to get your total score.Scores range from 0-40. The higher your score, the more stressedout you feel.
Interpreting your score: * 0-10 = low stress, 11-20 = medium stress, 21-30 = high stress, 31-40 =
extreme stress