It’s two o’clock in the morning and you’re lying in bed. You have something immensely important and challenging to do that next day – a critical meeting, a presentation, an exam. You have to get a decent night’s rest, but you’re still wide awake. You try different strategies for relaxing – take deep, slow breaths, try to imagine restful mountain scenery – but instead you keep thinking that unless you fall asleep in the next minute, your career is finished. Thus you lie there, more tense by the second.
I think most people can relate in some way to the situation that Robert M. Sapolsky describes at the very beginning of his book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping. Who doesn’t occasionally have trouble sleeping because stress is somehow keeping our mind running?
Sapolsky explains that disease has changed a lot in the last one hundred years. Whereas the chief killers at the beginning of the twentieth century were tuberculosis, pneumonia, the flu, and childbirth, today, medical advances have ensured that those diseases (or natural processes like childbirth) are rarely fatal. So, what’s affecting us today? Sapolsky argues that our heart disease, adult-onset diabetes, Alzeheimers, and even cancer might be caused by stress.
Can Stress Truly Be Killing Us?
When all is going well, humans live in a state of homeostasis, in other words, an ideal body temperature, an ideal level of glucose in the bloodstream, and everything else in balance. When faced with stress, our body pumps out adrenaline and other hormones to give us the energy that is needed to overcome that stress. We shut off the inessentials like digestion and our body focuses on that short-term crisis. This was great when it was because we accidentally bumped into a lion or need to navigate an overflowing river. It’s not so wonderful when our blood pressure rises when we are stuck in traffic or taking an important test.
And studies show that the more our body responds to stress (like it has evolved to do), the more damage we do to our systems. We can damage our cardiovascular systems by increasing our blood pressure, we can impair our long-term memories by weakening the connection between our neurons, and we can delete our dopamine stores (the neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of happiness) and become depressed. Lastly, we can damage our frontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for making decisions, and our judgment can fly out the window.
All of what I’ve written about stress is pretty scary. Most scary, perhaps, is that our bodies respond to stress in this way because that was originally the best way to survive. Now, because of the kinds of stresses we deal with (deadlines, meetings, financial crises), these responses are not best for our health. But, they are all we’ve got!
Living with Stress
We cannot change our biology, but there are certain things we can control in our responses to stress. Below, I have outlined Sapolsky’s suggestions of how to better cope with stress and live a happier (and healthier!) life.
Surround yourself with friends. When studying animals that were subject to minor stressful events, it was clear that they developed ulcers if left to handle the stress alone. However, if those animals had “friends” or companions before the stressful events and were able to be around them after the stressful events, they did not develop ulcers. Bottom line: keep your friends around you during times of crisis. They don’t just help you navigate the stressful time, they change the way your body responds to stress.
If you can, attempt to prepare. If the stress is something you can prepare for, it will give you a sense of control. Scientist studies animals who were warned 10 seconds before the stress. Those animals did not develop ulcers, unlike the animals who were not warned. So, if you are aware that you will encounter a stressful situation, preparing for it in any way can ultimately prevent your body from jumping into high gear.
Find a distraction. When your body remains in a high state of stress for prolonged periods, the damage to your heart, digestion, and brain can be significant. Animals who had a source of distraction (a toy or even another animal to attack) after a stressful event were considerably healthier than animals who did not. Therefore, find a hobby or something else that can take your mind off of the stress. Not only will you temporarily stop thinking about the stress, your body will stop exhibiting the stress response.
The next step?
Not all stress is bad. In fact, I’ve written about ways to use anxiety and stress and turn it into something good. The key is to harness it! Don’t let it keep you up at night and don’t let it make your heart race for no reason. Instead, take that extra energy and turn it into something useful. After all, Sapolsky would argue that it is quite dangerous if you don’t!
