Stress, gets a lot of bad press and we hear it over and over again that stress isn’t good for us. As a matter of fact, 90% – 95% of all doctor’s visits are due to stress-related illnesses and stress has been linked to serious health issues like heart problems, high blood pressure, skin conditions, diabetes, asthma and arthritis.
While we all agree that chronic stress negatively affects our health and well-being, what’s talked about much less – or not at all – are the positive effects of stress. Amazing research, which is hardly discussed, shows that stress can actually speed up cognitive processing, improve our immune system and deepen social bonds.
Yes, feeling stressed out sucks, but there are a few upsides to stress as well. Here are our TOP 10 ways in which stress might actually be good for us and boost our health.
#1 Stress Can Sharpen Your Memory
Did you ever experience that when you are stressed out, your memory seems to get a boost? Remember that big presentation you aced because the information just seemed to flow out of you out of nowhere. The release of stress hormones in our brain can increase our alertness when we need it the most, which means a short burst of stress can actually help us to get focused and improve our memory when we have an important presentation at work coming up or are prepping for a test. However, keep in mind that sustained stress over a longer period of time can make our mind foggy and stops our brain from recalling facts. This is one of the reasons why 9-1-1 was developed for emergencies. Research showed that if people were under severe stress, they were only able to remember three numbers.
#2 Stress Can Make Life More Interesting
Most of the time we use good stress as a survival tool, but there is some stress we feel when we choose to take on a challenge. Think about certain stressful situations we consciously seek out to make life more enjoyable and interesting. Something like facing and conquering a known fear, learning something completely new, asking someone out on a date, interacting with people we’ve never met or jumping out of a plane. Those situations don’t usually come to our mind when we think of stressors, probably because we get a positive outcome in the end, but they are the types of stressors that can help us achieve happiness, health and fulfillment in life.
#3 Stress Can Build Brain Cells
That’s quite the statement… Stress can actually make us smarter? The answer is apparently yes. In a recent study from California, researchers found that acute, temporary stress can double the formation of new brain cells in the hippocampus leading to better performance in memory tests. Short bursts of stress can lead to the creation of new neurons that – after they mature – improve our learning capabilities as well as the processing and retention of new information.
#4 Stress Can Build Deeper Connections
We’ve always heard stress leads to aggression and hostility, however, research shows that acute, temporary stress may actually lead to greater social, cooperative and friendly behavior, which results in deep social bonds. As human beings, we have a profound need for deep social connections and being exposed to bursts of stress seems favorable to creating lifelong friendships.
#5 Stress Can Boost Your Immune System
It’s a known fact that our body needs a healthy immune system in order to help fight off disease and infections. Believe it or not, good stress can actually help our body’s defense system to fight off illnesses, because when we get sick, stress causes us to release hormones to fight the threat against our health. The right kind of stress is particularly helpful and effective when we are just in the onset of an illness, which is when our body needs help the most. However, our immune system can handle only so much stress. If the stress is sustained over a longer period of time, these hormones are overwhelming to our body and can have the adverse effect and decrease our immunity. So an initial short-term burst of stress is an asset, but long-term stress makes us vulnerable.
#6 Stress Can Speed Up Your Ability to Think
We’ve probably all experienced this at one point or another. If we are put in a stressful situation, the speed at which our brain processes information increases tremendously. Stress signals to our prefrontal cortex that the situation at hand is something that is worth our immediate attention. So if you find yourself procrastinating and want your brain to be focused and work sharp, give yourself some stressors – like a tight deadline for example – to get you going.
#7 Stress Can Motivate You To Succeed
The scientific community calls good stress eustress and it may just be the thing that motivates you to get the job done. We’ve talked about it above, staring a tight deadline in the eye is stimulating you to handle the situation quickly, effectively and more productively because you see the stressful situation as a challenge that you can solve rather than an insurmountable and overwhelming roadblock. Eustress can also help you to enter the flow state – some refer to it also as being in the zone – which leads to being completely absorbed in the task at hand and it heightens your awareness. Being under pressure to succeed can activate the state of flow at work, in any creative endeavor or in sports.
#8 Stress Can Make You More Resilient
Having to learn how to deal with short-term stress, will make it a lot easier to manage future stresses. If you are repeatedly exposed to stressful situations, you get a chance to develop both psychological and physical control, so that when a big stressful situation comes up in the future, you don’t just shut down, but are able to handle anything that is thrown at you.
#9 Stress Can Help You Be More Creative
Stress can oftentimes lead to creative breakthroughs. If we are completely relaxed, calm and collected, there is no need to see things differently. However, if we feel a slight increase in stress because we change our situation, we need to be creative to come up with a solution, because our old way of thinking just won’t lead to the desired outcome.
#10 Stress Can Enhance Sports Performance
Our human body is designed to optimize its function under acute stress. It’s engrained in our DNA as a survival mechanism. Just think about how you would react to an encounter with a saber-tooth tiger in the wilderness. We activate our fight-or-flight response due to the perceived danger, so that we can run to safe our life. The same happens at a sporting event, when the competition is extremely tight. For example, if you are playing a high stakes basketball game, you become more alert and have a sharper focus and the fight-or-flight response boosts your strength and stamina.
Without a doubt, we face an enormous amount of stress in our everyday lives, however, contrary to the common belief that stress needs to be avoided at all cost, some stress can actually be a good thing. Keep in mind, we are talking about moderate stress that can give us incredible advantages. So while there can be a true upside to stress, like everything else, too much of anything is rarely a good thing. Small bursts of stress for short periods of time can provide great benefits, but it is still true that long-term stress is the cause of many emotional and physical illnesses and needs to be avoided at all cost.
USE STRESS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
Joschi & Monika
#BoldNaked
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