Current Events > Are you stressed? Subjecting yourself to stress is lethal.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Not everyone can help it and I know this goes without saying, but if you live a stressful life and subject yourself to stress often do your best to make a change to reduce it when possible. Being stressed will actually rip your DNA apart. I don't think many people appreciate that stress is an enemy of longevity but instead rationalize it as an honorable way to live for the sake of appearing motivated or successful in western society. Additionally there are many situations where people can make a concerted effort to not react with stress through reasoning that it is mostly unproductive in addressing adversities.

What are telomeres and how are they related to aging and disease?
Telomeres are a protective casing at the end of a strand of DNA. Each time a cell divides, it loses a bit of its telomeres. An enzyme called telomerase can replenish it, but chronic stress and cortisol exposure decrease your supply. When the telomere is too diminished, the cell often dies or becomes pro-inflammatory. This sets the aging process in motion, along with associated health risks.

How does stress rank in terms of factors that affect telomere length?
The two biggest factors are chronological aging and genetics, but stress is now on the map as one of the most consistent predictors of shorter telomere length. The type of stress determines how big its effect is. It seems exposures to multiple early life adversities, such as child neglect, have the largest effects, since they track through to late adulthood, or they set in place persistent mechanisms that maintain short telomeres throughout life, such as exaggerated stress reactivity and poor health behaviors. Stressors such as caregiving in late life also have an effect. So we can see this relationship between stress and cell aging across a lifespan, and it's fundamental to how we're built. Our brains are constantly looking for threats to our survival. When we expose our bodies to years of chronic stress arousal, we see effects that override normal aging, making our telomeres look like they are from a significantly older person. When we look at groups of people with psychiatric disorders related to dysregulated emotional responses, especially depression, and compare them to controls who have never experienced these disorders, they consistently have shorter telomeres.

More reading/source:
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/10/chronic-stress.aspx
(The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States)

There are many sources of evidence that telomere attrition is associated with, and probably causative of, cancer.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3318193/
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nah i try to maximize my eustress instead of my distress
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Yo, I'm trying not to but when life wants to bend you over and hit you from behind, you cant stop it.

No I'm not suicidal, of all sorts shit hitting me all at once when you've hit a point in life.
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VIIVincent posted...

Yo, I'm trying not to but when life wants to bend you over and hit you from behind, you cant stop it.

No I'm not suicidal, of all sorts shit hitting me all at once when you've hit a point in life.

I feel that, definitely experienced a few lows where stress was overwhelming and it largely had to do with my inability to provide for myself in the current economic structure without making large sacrifices that cost me some sanity (working long hours under oppressive management while studying, not having enough time for sleep etc).

I think as a society maybe we should address this kind of stress with better social safety nets, stronger labor regulations, etc instead of pushing for more suffering as some kind of weird dated rite of passage. The struggle is definitely real.
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YOUHAVENOHOPE posted...

nah i try to maximize my eustress instead of my distress

Good deal, no need to be overwhelmed if at all possible.
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Kombucha posted...

VIIVincent posted...

Yo, I'm trying not to but when life wants to bend you over and hit you from behind, you cant stop it.

No I'm not suicidal, of all sorts shit hitting me all at once when you've hit a point in life.

I feel that, definitely experienced a few lows where stress was overwhelming and it largely had to do with my inability to provide for myself in the current economic structure without making large sacrifices that cost me some sanity (working long hours under oppressive management while studying, not having enough time for sleep etc).

I think as a society maybe we should address this kind of stress with better social safety nets, stronger labor regulations, etc instead of pushing for more suffering as some kind of weird dated rite of passage. The struggle is definitely real.

Bootstraps and all that. I agree with you, especially for the bolded.
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