Stress: how to use it to your advantage

The story begins with a complicated pregnancy. Not one: ten. Ten pregnant rats delivered to scientists at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA. And how the rodents suffered at their hands ... Throughout the first days of pregnancy, they spent every night in the open - literally, with the cages lit all the time.

As if sleep deprivation were not enough, there was an imminent threat, albeit invisible, always close by: a strong fox smell lurked around the laboratory. They were afraid of being eaten. They lived seven intense days, full of stress ( or "stress", as they say in Portuguese, but we prefer the consecrated spelling here ), with the fetuses inside, absorbing all that tension load.

Two weeks later, they were all born apparently healthy. But they had barely taken the first breath out of the womb and already felt the stress in their bellies. Right there, in the intestinal flora.

There, there was less lactobacillus (the good bacteria that protect the body and help synthesize vitamins) than the general average - scientists also tested children of mothers who were not stressed. And that changed the game: the composition of the blood contained different nutrients, which impaired the formation of neurons and neurotransmitters. The poor puppies got along badly - all the mother's fault.

Or rather: from stress - the evil of the modern world. If the rat was able to pass the nerve to fetuses, with humans it would probably work the same way. The media bought the story and highlighted on the covers of the portals: "stress passes from mother to child during pregnancy". Accused and condemned, the villain added another reason to be humanity's number one enemy.

And the list is quite long: stress is accused of ending the life of 110 million every year, by stimulating heart attacks, strokes, depression, etc. In the United States, it is more deadly than diabetes or Alzheimer's, and sucks $ 190 billion a year just from citizens stressed with work, on medical bills.

Here the situation is not the best either: the International Stress Control Association has placed Brazilians as the second most stressed people in the world (behind the Japanese), because of professional problems. According to the Institute of Psychology and Stress Control, in a survey conducted with more than 2,000 people, only 12% of them classify their own stress as healthy - another 33% believe they are excessively stressed.

And that is how most people deal with it: they see it as a problem, a delay in life, something to be avoided at all costs.

Fortunately, new scientific research shows that this is just a piece of history - and that you can benefit (and a lot) from stress. Know the stress of good.

In the beginning, it was stress

Stress is older than human beings. It was born soon with the first single-celled organisms, billions of years ago, in the middle of the ocean. At that time, it was just the physiological response to an external physical change. Faced with environmental fluctuations (pressure, water temperature, presence of toxins), the organism needed to maintain its internal balance and it was enough to activate the right proteins for the situation to normalize.

This was stress: the reaction to an imbalance caused by external factors. Only a few hundred million years later, when life on Earth started to become more complex and exciting, with hunters and predators hanging around, did it start to function as a hormonal response to some types of threats.

That was when the animals began to feel fear and stress took on a negative connotation - in response to the dangers, the organism developed a series of reactions that altered the entire functioning of the body.

The difference between us and other animals is that only humans have the feat of transforming a merely imaginary idea into a real threat, with all the physiological reactions of stress. A mouse will only get stressed if it really feels the presence of a cat nearby. But we, with a little more cognitive ability, can imagine the presence of a cat - and get stressed before it is even around.

"Distorting stress to the point of doing harm is uniquely human, in which emotions and thoughts have a powerful influence, for better or for worse," says neuroendocrinologist Bruce McEwen, in the book The End of Stress as We Know It . “I think, therefore I am” makes perfect sense in the case of stress.

In excess, these reactions overload the organism and do harm, especially to the heart system. But there is a general exaggeration: with the help of science and the media, stress has become synonymous with any difficulty in life, and something to be feared. That's because research focuses much more on the negative side of stress.

"The budget is limited and, understandably, ends up being used for research that is more likely to alleviate human suffering," says McEwen. “And it is easier to study something that went wrong, with blood tests, psychological questionnaires and a comparison with healthy people. But where do you start if you try to study why someone is healthy? What questions and tests do you ask? ”

It is this arsenal of negative results that comes out in the media, like the rat research done by scientists in Pennsylvania. Okay, stress can even work in a similar way between humans, like a cruel inheritance left by the mother.

But the animals tested underwent real threats - fear of being devoured all the time, without sleeping properly - during one third of the gestation. It is too much danger together. It wasn't a passing stress, an anxiety over a public performance or anything. How many pregnant women go through such a difficult situation? Very few. There is no need to worry - at least not with this news.

The first research on stress started in the 1950s and, even then, it was known that it was not all bad. Soon, physiological reactions to threats were divided into two phases: eustress and distress. The first is the exclusively positive part, an extra energy that the body offers in response. The distress is that it would be overload, when the body starts to get tired of the reactions triggered by stress.

There is so much extra supply of energy that the body ends up getting exhausted. But this only happens in extreme situations, if the wear is very prolonged and excessive. In reasonable doses, stress can function almost like a natural anabolic.

In order to deal with it well, it is important to understand the benefits it brings to our body. At first, he transforms us into a kind of superhero: we are stronger, more resistant to pain, more focused, more intelligent and even more sociable.

At the first sign of threat (real or imagined), your hypothalamus goes on alert and sends signals to the adrenal glands, which soon begin to release adrenaline into the bloodstream. This hormone increases your heart rate to bring more blood to your muscles and more oxygen to other organs.

With more energy, the brain works better - it makes you more alert and focused, able to pay more attention to any visual or auditory stimuli (and therefore more attentive to a meeting at work, for example).

Adrenaline also stimulates the production of fibrinogen to speed up coagulation and release glucose stores. The brain then starts producing endorphins, which have an analgesic effect - it is what helps you run when a predator appears for hours, despite tiredness: it essentially numbs your pains.

The adrenal glands also produce cortisol - the main stress detector in clinical examinations. It is also not all bad: it replenishes energy stores, turning food sources into glucose and fat, which leaves you with more energy at hand to face problems (and, yes, it also means that, in excess, stress leaves you with a more prominent belly). Even proteins become fat.

Cortisol also controls the immune system: it changes the texture of white cells, which are stuck to the walls of vessels and tissues to be ready in case of invaders. In practice, it sends defense cells straight to the battlefront. That is, stress can make you even more resistant to disease! When there is no longer a need to maintain the warning signal, cortisol deactivates the immune system, leaving it in normal standby mode.

Another hormone that is usually released during stress is oxytocin - the famous love hormone, generated during sex, kisses, hugs and during childbirth. He is to blame for the feeling of well-being when you exchange affection with someone or laugh with a friend. His mission is to strengthen ties between human beings. Your brain releases pleasure to encourage you to live those situations again, for one reason: to stimulate community life, thus increasing the chances of survival.

Oxytocin makes these interactions pleasant - and it even improves your brain's ability to understand other people's feelings. More than that, it protects the heart, regenerating cells and repairing minor injuries. “When your stress response includes oxytocin, it can literally strengthen your heart. This is very different from the messages we usually hear - what stress will make you sick, ”writes psychologist Kelly McGonigal in the book The Upside of Stress.

To close, our body produces yet another substance, DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone). It helps to increase the plasticity of the brain. In practice, this means that your brain can learn and memorize more about that stressful experience, thanks to this hormone. This makes a lot of sense: it is important that we learn from dangerous situations so that, the next time they happen, we know what to do. That is, if you were nervous in traffic, afraid of being late for a very important meeting and decided to take an alternative route to the office, the chances of you remembering the trip later increase considerably. All thanks to stress.As we have seen, your head makes all the difference when it comes to saying whether you are going to suffer or benefit from stress. The way you look at things determines your body's reaction: whether or not it will trigger a load of fear, anxiety, nervousness, etc.

Alia Crum, a psychologist at Stanford University, decided to test this behavior and invited groups of people for a supposed job interview. Interviewers should criticize them at all costs - it didn't matter if what they said made sense or not, everyone would receive a negative comment. There was only one difference between the volunteers: some had watched a short and informative video about the benefits of stress (how it can help to overcome challenges), while others saw an opposite message (stress is the worst villain in the world).

At the end of the massacring interview, everyone without exception was stressed, with high levels of cortisol in their blood. But members of the first group performed better. The fact that they saw a positive message about a bad situation increased the concentration of DHEA in the body. It is as if they have made peace with stress.

That is, one of the most efficient weapons when it comes to combating malignant stress is information. Coping well with stress is not ignoring it or trying to escape it. It is taking advantage of that extra gas of energy to seek a new occupation, to finish a job poorly finished, to become more productive. According to Crum, those who make this change in thinking feel more satisfied with their own lives, suffer less depression and report fewer health problems over the years. The good news is that with training, everyone can get there.

Jeremy Jamieson, a stress specialist at the University of Rochester, USA, was able to show how rapid training can change responses to stress (turning them into extra energy and not health problems). The test was even more exhausting than Crum's. All volunteers would have three minutes to create a speech about themselves, and present it to communication experts who would assess each person's strengths and weaknesses.

\ In the middle of the room, surrounded by purposefully discontented professionals, as in the case of Crum's research, they would receive a flood of criticism. Soon thereafter, they would pass complex math tests - the accounts would be done head on and answered verbally. There was no way they wouldn't feel stressed. There was no other. That's what happened: their cortisol levels increased by up to 400%.

Only a third of them felt more confident than the others. Before the test marathon, they had learned from researchers about how stress works in the body and how these responses exist to play in favor of new challenges. They were tips like: “watch your heart racing. Don't worry, it is triggered to take more oxygen to the brain and make you more connected and smart. ”

The idea was to make those participants see the reactions of the organism as an attempt by the body to help them. And it worked. When evaluating the expressions of these volunteers during the presentation, the researchers noticed more smiles and body gestures that indicate confidence than the other participants (see more on the previous page).

It's turnaround time

That's why Jamieson and other experts suggest that you change your stance towards stress. This is the most important part. When you start to feel stressed, think about how you prepared for that test or challenge - and how many times you have not experienced similar situations. Start trusting your body's responses. He wants your good - and stress is his way of showing it.

In each situation, try to take advantage of that extra load of energy in your favor. This will help you gain more confidence and make better decisions. Another American study guarantees that if you know how to deal with stress well, you will also become more optimistic and make better life choices.

Seeking advice from friends or people who have gone through the same challenging events is also an effective tactic against stress. This interaction increases the levels of oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine - which yield a good dose of well-being and help to raise your self-esteem. When you are in danger, under stress, counting on others increases the chances of you doing well. But it is not only those who seek help who do well - those who offer help also benefit from these benefits.

In a study of more than 1,000 Americans, volunteers reported how many times they had felt stressed in the past year and how many people they had helped during that same period. Facing bad situations, such as a family crisis, increased the risk of death. Except for one group: the generous ones. As much as he faced something terrible, anyone who had taken the time to help friends and relatives was not at risk of having a disease associated with tension. No wonder, when patients with post-traumatic stress start to help other victims, the levels of cortisol and adrenaline drop significantly. It's like looking at stress positively (yours or someone else's) by turning off his negative overload - leaving only the bright side.

Still, sometimes, it is good not to forget your body. It may be more difficult for some than for others to get out of the “toxic stress” hole. In such cases, it is necessary to go beyond the psychological - your organism works together body-mind, after all. Then the tips are the same that doctors get tired of repeating to ensure physical health. Sleeping well helps (eight hours a day): good sleep reduces the levels of cortisol and glucose in the body, and makes you wake up calmer, ready for the day. Practicing physical exercise produces hormones that prevent stress from becoming too heavy: endorphins (painkillers) and prolactin (which gives you a feeling of relaxation).

The practice of physical activities also facilitates the formation of new neurons. Yoga and other meditation techniques have the same effect. Taking alcoholic beverages in moderation and not smoking also avoid the stress of evil. These two substances are, in themselves, stressful, in the original sense of the word, that of causing cellular imbalance - think of the organism's reaction when you pull smoke into the lung with more than 4,600 types of poisons or take one to the stomach. intoxicating liquid. The body goes on alert. Some types of food, such as chicory, lettuce and bananas also help to reduce stress-related hormones.

Finally, it is good to stop fighting wear and tear. "People need to recognize that many important activities do bring a little stress - and that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that," says Suzanne Segerstrom, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky. The good news is that you are already someone else in relation to the one who started reading this article: you already have the first tool in hand to deal with stress. You now know that the physiological reactions of the body produce beneficial effects for you. You will not be alarmed when your heart starts to beat faster and your breathing becomes labored, for example. You will understand that your body is becoming a machine to face difficulties. And you will benefit from stress.