Hormetic Stress and Aging
“Our stress responses are not typically thought of as basic mechanisms of aging,” writes Elissa S. Epel in a 2020 review article, “but indeed they are actively shaping rate of aging.” Her article looks at physiological, psychological, and social stresses and the need to develop “stress resilience” and use beneficial hormetic stress as a way to slow biological aging and decrease age-related disease. Over the eons, humans have adapted, physiologically and psychologically, to acute stresses from environmental changes, periodic food depravation, and other survival threats. In a very real sense, what didn’t kill them made them stronger. But too much of a “good stress” can also cause harm.










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