The two kinds of stress: Adaptive Stress vs Chronic Stress

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Yeah, so there are basically two kinds of stress. There is adaptive stress and chronic stress. Adaptive stress is short-term. These are things like exercise, test taking. These things are actually good for you. Stress becomes bad when stress is chronic cuz chronic stress leads to things like higher levels of elevated cortisol and inflammation. Okay, when cortisol is high and remains high, it cortisol is a hormone for that retains water. It retains sodium. And sodium will retain the water therefore increasing your blood pressure and because your blood cells are more voluminous and they sort of clog your arteries. Think of like a pipe and where there's too much water in the pipe, the pressure of the pipe becomes high, right? That's just what's happening inside of your blood arteries and that's going to lead to a stiff blood vessels. It's going to lead to a strokes, hypertension, you know, neurodegenerative diseases even, things like that. So and then the inflammation is like So inflammation is like a cleanup crew or like your protectors, right? When you get a cut or a bruise, you know, blood uh white blood cells and other things, you know, omega-3s come to the site and they basically patch it up.

[00:01:06]But when inflammation becomes chronic, it's it this cleanup crew starts actually attacking your the cells that aren't that haven't caused any problems and start attacking the surrounding area, right? So you don't want that cuz that's going to lead to what calcification of your arteries cuz the inflamed parts of your blood vessels and linings in your tissues are it's easier for them to be calcified by calcium. And so that's going to lead to the stiffening of your arteries, things like that.

[00:01:33]What things can we do to lower stress?

[00:01:37]Well, once again, like adaptive stress like exercise, which raises your VO2 max, stabilizes your mood, and decreases your risk for things like sarcopenia, right? Sleep. Sleep is probably the biggest one. Um sleep stabilizes your hormones and regulates your hormones, right? So things like leptin, ghrelin, cortisol, all that stuff. Um, social connections, right? Having friends or family that you can go to to, you know, get empathy from and talk to about things. It's sort of like decompresses you and alleviates you of of stress.

[00:02:10]Um, that those are things to limit stress. So, just to recap, adaptive stress, short-term stress, that's good for you.

[00:02:16]Those things like exercise, memorization, which helps, you know, brain function, test taking, things like that. And then long-term stress, chronic stress, when stress never goes away, that's bad.

[00:02:27]Um, yeah.