Stress Is Weathering Our Bodies From the Inside Out

Health costs. When we are motivated by fear of failure, stress hormones flood our systems. Long-term stress is correlated with a variety of health problems, from heart disease to asthma to depression. Human bodies are not designed to be in a stressed state for hours each day, and it wrecks our health if we are.

The stress that often accompanies chronic pain is a likely contributor to this neurodegeneration, as the stress hormone cortisol has been shown to cause brain cells to wither away and die.

Unfortunately, that physical hyper-response, that constant alertness, burns up a lot of precious energy and physical resources. This response is really what everyone calls stress, and it is by no means only or even primarily psychological. It’s a reflection of the genuine constraints of unfortunate circumstances. When operating at the bottom, the a

Why does our stress linger so much longer than theirs, sometimes becoming chronic? The answer is in our brain. Our capacity for thought—as precious as it is—gets in our way. In addition to a fretful mind, popular messages encourage us to live in overdrive, making it all the more difficult for us to return to a calm state. Let’s examine each of thes

what if the psychobiological toll of living with death and despair as constant partners led to death itself?