Why Stress is Not Always Bad

Is stress always bad? It can be, but it can be good for you, too. Certainly, much can be done to unlearn stressful behaviors and gain both perspective and balance. But according to this Newsweek article, people (including scientists) fail to see the full picture. The other view is that the stress response -- the body's hormonal reaction to danger, uncertainty or change -- evolved to help us survive, and kept in check, it still can. In the short term, it can energize us, "revving up our systems to handle what we have to handle," says Judith Orloff, a psychiatrist at UCLA. Unfortunately, a lot of us tend to flip the stress-hormone switch to "on" and leave it there. So what is challenge and how and when does it become prolonged stress? This article further investigates.

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