Stress… in a new light

Who Says Stress is Bad for You? by Mary Carmichael caught my eye in last week’s issue of Newsweek magazine. Until now, most articles on stress only stress how bad stress is for us and how we should, in any way possible, eliminate it from our lives. Of course that’s easier said than done. But in the Newsweek article, the author points to studies that show that not everyone is affected by stress in the same way and how, in some cases, stress may actually be beneficial.

In one of the most fascinating examples, she quotes a 1970s and 80s study that followed some 430 employees of a company that was undergoing a major crisis. “While most of the workers suffered as their company fell apart – performing poorly on the job, getting divorced and developing high rates of heart attacks, obesity and strokes – a third of them fared well”. Surprisingly, those that survived the crisis without sacrificing their health were people who had experienced a lot of stress in their early childhood.

Another common assumption that is picked apart in this article is that mother’s stress during pregnancy harms the fetus. But in a soon-to-be-published paper, a Johns Hopkins researcher showed that “women under moderate stress in mid-to-late pregnancy wound up with toddlers who were developmentally advanced, scoring highly on language and cognitive tests… [and that] 2-week-old babies whose mothers were under moderate stress show evidence of faster nerve transmission – and possibly more mature brain development – than those whose moms had stress free pregnancies.”

The biggest problem with studying stress, according to the author and most researchers, is to classify what mild or moderate stress means. Each individual responds differently. Therefore, there is no such thing as a standardized method of measuring stress. There is also evidence to suggest that forcing yourself into stress-reducing activities like meditation or exercise may actually do more harm than good.

Ms. Carmichael writes about a study that placed two rats in running wheels. One of them was allowed to exercise whenever he wanted but the other was forced into the activity whenever the first rat was running. The rat given the freedom to exercise when it wanted showed positive changes in the brain (new neuron growth). The other one lost brain cells.

This, and similar studies, shows that the amount of control that we have over our lives determines how well we manage. “As a rule, if we feel we’re in control, we cope. If we don’t, we collapse” and Carmichael writes, “no amount of meditation or reframing our thinking can change certain facts of our lives.”

Regardless of how we choose to interpret these studies, I think they do provide a bit of hope and therefore may help us regain a little control in our own lives – or at least eliminate all the stress about being stressed out.