How many of you have dealt with pretty sever stress at one point or another?\u00a0 Pretty much all of us right?\u00a0 We have all heard that stress is a sickness, that it can make you more likely to have a heart attack, and will shorten your lifespan dramatically.\u00a0 But what if that wasn\u2019t the case, what if that was all in our minds?<\/p>\n
A study was recently done, involving 30,000 US adults for 8 years.\u00a0 The study asked 2 important questions.\u00a0 \u201cHow much stress have you experienced in the last year?\u201d And then asked, \u201cdo you believe stress is harmful for your health?\u201d\u00a0 They then used public health records to see who died.\u00a0 The results are quite interesting.\u00a0 43% of people who had experienced high levels of stress in the last year were more likely to die, but only if<\/b> they also believed that stress was harmful to them.\u00a0 Those who didn\u2019t believe that stress was harmful for them had little impact from stress itself, no matter the amount of stress they had in their life.<\/p>\n
Changing your mind about stress can change your bodies response to stress.\u00a0 A study was done that put students at Harvard into a very stressful situation.\u00a0 They were pushed into incredibly stressful social interactions, with judgmental onlookers.\u00a0 Half the students weren\u2019t prepped at all, the others were told to view stress not as a bad reaction, but as your body preparing itself for the situation.\u00a0 Your heart beating fast isnt a bad thing,it simply is pumping more oxygen to your brain.\u00a0 The body is flooding oxytocin into your system as part of the stress response, which motivates you to seek support, and makes you more compassionate towards others.\u00a0 The students who were prepped, and told to face stress as a normal and helpful reaction, not a bad thing, had \u00a0positive physical reactions.\u00a0 Their bodies reacted to the situation in a way that was much more like reacting to joy, than stress.<\/p>\n
Oxytocin, which floods the system during stress induced moments, has some unknown properties.\u00a0 Not only does it help your brain, but it helps your body.\u00a0 It protects your cardiovascular system during stressful times, it helps keep your blood vessels open, and it is a natural anti-inflammatory.\u00a0 It even helps regenerate heart cells, and strengthen your heart.\u00a0 These hormones grow stronger the more you use them by helping others.\u00a0 Another study was done, much like the first one.\u00a0 They asked 2 questions again, how much stress do you have, and how much time do you spend caring for\/helping others?\u00a0 Then they checked the death records 5 years later.\u00a0 As expected those who had very stressful lives had a higher risk of dying, but<\/b> those who spent time taking care of others shared absolutely no increase in dying.\u00a0 Caring created resiliance.\u00a0 How we act and how we think can definitely change our lives, maybe even save them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How many of you have dealt with pretty sever stress […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[508],"tags":[1075,948,1076],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}