'Toxic stress' can speed up aging and lead to other health problems; reducing stress levels can make a difference

Toxic stress can lead to unhealthy conditions.
(Photo by Luis Villasmil, Unsplash)

Not all stress is bad, but how does a person know when stress has crossed from a normal response to a health threat? And what can people do to change those feelings? Lawson R. Wulsin, a psychiatrist specializing in psychosomatic medicine, which focuses on people with physical and mental illnesses, discusses what good and toxic stress look like and what we can do about it in his commentary for The Conversation, a journalistic platform for academics.

One of the harshest truths about stress is that it speeds up aging. "A 2023 study of stress and aging over the life span — one of the first studies to confirm this piece of common wisdom — found that four measures of stress all speed up the pace of biological aging in midlife," Wulsin writes. "It also found that persistent high-stress ages people in a comparable way to the effects of smoking and low socioeconomic status, two well-established risk factors for accelerated aging."

The human body and mind are built to handle daily stresses, considered "good stress." Wulsin explains, "In fact, the rhythm of these daily challenges, including feeding yourself, cleaning up messes, communicating with one another and carrying out your job, helps to regulate your stress response system and keep you fit. . . . Toxic stress, on the other hand, wears down your stress response system in ways that have lasting effects."

While U.S. physicians aren't typically trained to treat stress, maybe they should be. Wulsin writes, "Over the past 40 years in the U.S., the alarming rise in rates of diabetes, obesity, depression, PTSD, suicide and addictions points to one contributing factor that these different illnesses share: toxic stress. Toxic stress increases the risk for the onset, progression, complications or early death from these illnesses."

If toxic stress is the catalyst for so many physical and mental woes, what can individuals do to reestablish healthier stress levels? "The first step to managing stress is to recognize it and talk to your primary care clinician about it. The clinician may do an assessment involving a self-reported measure of stress," Wulsin adds. "The next step is treatment. This approach, called 'lifestyle medicine,' focuses on improving health outcomes through changing high-risk health behaviors and adopting daily habits that help the stress response system self-regulate." 

For a deeper look at causes and treatments, Wulsin's book Toxic Stress will be released in April. For readers who are more interested in a physical explanation of what and where stress systems live in the body, a good explanation of polyvagal theory is here.