It turns out that within moderation, stress can even be good for you
’m sitting in the back of the plane when the pilot announces we’ve reached maximum altitude. One of the crew gets up and – somewhat theatrically – slides open the side of the plane. In ones and twos, we shuffle towards the open door. When it comes to my turn, standing on the edge of a two-mile vertical drop, I’m more terrified than I’ve ever been.
Researchers have tracked levels of stress hormones in first-time and experienced parachute jumpers. At the moment of jumping, novices experience very high levels of stress, both subjectively and objectively, based on levels of stress hormones. In contrast, experienced skydivers like the instructor also show a spike in stress hormones, but they don’t panic.
Psychologists call this a “stress appraisal”. Our stress appraisals are based on the things we experience in a given situation, on our immediate self-assessment and on memories of how we coped with similar situations. It’s not that experienced parachutists don’t feel the butterflies, they just get them to fly in formation.
That’s not all. Among parachutists, who experience acute and episodic stress, a different and fascinating effect has been observed. The spikes in stress have actually proved to have beneficial effects. Research in the military found that after their initial parachute jump, first timers had higher levels of natural “killer cells”, which are fundamental to our immune response to infection, compared with soldiers who weren’t selected for the jump.
It makes sense that it’s all about balance. Too much – or too little – stress is bad for you yet common knowledge has not caught up with psychological science. For most of us, even the word stress is anathema, conjuring up feelings of being overwhelmed and on edge. Admitting to experiencing stress is associated with feelings of failure and inadequacy.
Over an eight-year period, this was tracked to understand what effect the perception of stress had on people’s health. The conclusions were astonishing. They found that high levels of stress increased the risk of premature mortality by 43% – but only among those who believed stress was harmful. People who perceived stress as not being harmful were no more likely to die.
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