We often think of stress as being something that merely resides in our minds. But stress certainly isn’t just “all in your head.” We know that emotional stress can elicit a plethora of physiological responses – higher blood pressure, higher heart rate, faster breathing, elevated stress hormones, and so on. In the natural world, this response is adaptive, triggered acutely in the face of immediate danger (like if you are retreating from a hungry predator), and will dissipate quickly once the threat is resolved. However, psychological stress can induce the same response. And when this response is repeatedly activated, again and again over the course of years, it can exert an insidious physical toll. In other words, our thoughts and feelings, and how we cope with them, can actually affect our bodies in a real and measurable way. For example, research has shown that exposure to sustained economic hardship is linked to accelerated physiological aging. Individuals who have spent a signif...
