Health & Fitness

Stress Resilience: Key to Anti-Aging

Kristen Sparrow • June 06, 2017

Woman running in a city
Exercise: A form of Hormesis

From Rhonda Patrick’s latest email she stresses that exercise, or even green tea, things that stress the body in a hormetic way (a relatively minor stress that does not cause overwhelming damage) up regulate anti-oxidants and other repair systems.

My hunch about acupuncture is that it provides this same benefit, a small stressor that stimulates repair systems.  Now how to prove it?  HRV of course!!

from Rhonda Patrick

“What choices can I make that will result in my body becoming more resilient to stress?

This is because all of the primary causes of aging have stress at their root. However, somewhat paradoxically, stress isn’t always bad. Short-term stress can result in a reduction in long-term, chronic stress. In other words, we can build resilience. Exercise works this way, and so does even drinking green tea. In fact, many beneficial compounds work by inducing a type of “hormesis”, which causes your body to up-regulate its own built-in antioxidant and repair systems.

Tricking our body with hormetic substances like green tea isn’t our only option for building resilience to stress. Stress is a consequence of being alive. Even as you read this, the mitochondria that generate the energy for your cells to do their work are producing oxidative damage as a byproduct, which must be sequestered…and for what slips through the cracks, repairs must be made.