Writing a book about stress and illness, Toxic Stress: How Stress is Making Us Ill and What We Can Do About It (2024), has changed the way I read. I now read most scientific articles through a new lens that tries to see what this tells us about our stress response system. So, when I read an article this week about the effects of the pregnant mother’s sleep on the development of her child, I saw another light shine on the mystery of how stress gets passed from one generation to the next.
Should we treat stress?
The answer to this question, as for most complex questions, is “it depends.”
For the good and tolerable stresses of daily life, the answer is clearly “no.” By definition, we handle good and tolerable stress well enough without needing to treat it. Forget about the mythical “stress-free life": If that were even possible, it would be bad for your health.
In November 2021 a notable event in the science of heart disease passed unnoticed by the popular press. That, in itself, is not noteworthy, but then two months later the New York Times health columnist Jane Brody called our attention to the publication of a promising article in the November issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association that could change the way your heart disease is treated, some day. This is a tale of promise and inertia, or the resistance to change in the practice of medicine.
One of the most powerful ways we’re attached to others is through our social hierarchies. Think about how much time and emotional energy we spend thinking about the person just above us at work, or the person we answer to, or the person who currently has the most influence on our daily lives. If that’s a nourishing relationship, we thrive, but if that’s a troubling relationship, it’s hard to turn off that kind of worry.
