Good News about Stress -- Believe It or Don't

Newsweek may be disappearing from newstands soon, but its medical coverage as of late has been superb. A couple of weeks ago came a story on The Two Sleeps that literally changed my life. (Instead of taking drastic measures to sleep through the night, do what nature suggests -- sleep one shift, get up, take care of business, read, whatever -- then sleep a second shift when the sleepiness returns.)

Now comes a thoughtful, wry story by Mary Carmichael on why stress in moderate doses may be good for us. To wit:

The stress response—the body's hormonal reaction to danger, uncertainty or change—evolved to help us survive, and if we learn how to keep it from overrunning our lives, 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. In the long term, stress can motivate us to do better at jobs we care about. A little of it can prepare us for a lot later on, making us more resilient.

Even when it's extreme, stress may have some positive effects—which is why, in addition to posttraumatic stress disorder, some psychologists are starting to define a phenomenon called posttraumatic growth. "There's really a biochemical and scientific bias that stress is bad, but anecdotally and clinically, it's quite evident that it can work for some people," says Orloff. "We need a new wave of research with a more balanced approach to how stress can serve us." Otherwise, we're all going to spend far more time than we should stressing ourselves out about the fact that we're stressed out.

Wonder if Carmichael got on to this story because she was stressed out about losing her job...