It’s normal to feel stressed at times, but chronic stress can cause health problems such as anxiety, high blood pressure, and even a heart attack.
However, the effect does not stop there. In a recent episode with Elissa Epel, author of “Stress Prescriptions,” and Dan Harris of Elissa Epel, a happiness and aging expert, we shared how chronic stress affects your cell health and can accelerate your aging.
“As my guests today say, your cells are listening to your life. If you tweak your life, your cells will respond accordingly,” Harris said.
In each cell in the body, the chromosomes “have protective caps at the tip, and these are called telomeres,” Epel said in the podcast.
“They don’t like stress, and stress is a threat to them because it can damage our DNA and cause all sorts of biological problems.”
If we continue to manage stress for years or decades without good rest and without a break, this accelerates the rate of aging.
Elissa Epel
Author of “Stress Prescriptions” and International Experts on Stress and Aging
Telomeres naturally shrink with age, but as people often feel stressed, the process accelerates even faster, she explained.
“Chronic stress, if we continue to manage stress for years or decades and without a break, this accelerates the rate of aging,” Epel said.
“We know that we have telomeres in every cell and that they hear what we think, our feelings, so they respond to our lifestyle, which helps us to take care of them.”
There are several practices that Epel recommends adding to your daily routine. It lowers stress levels.
Four Ways to Live a Longer, Healthier Life
Given the challenges we face worldwide, it can be difficult to avoid stress, Epel said. But the good news is that the damage caused to telomeres as a result of chronic stress can be reversed.
“We can restore every day. We can recover our cells, give them breaks, create an anti-inflammatory lifestyle to slow down aging, or at least put all of the stressors we are exposed to in our cells, not to accelerate aging,” she said.
Below are some ways she says you can relieve stress and have a positive effect on telomeres.
Eating more fruits and vegetables creates a meditative state whether you’re meditating, whether you’re trying more omega-3s on your diet, or try out the Mediterranean diet, or try out the Mediterranean with deep rest with practices like yoga or breathed flow state.
“These are these small changes that we can do, and they’re not major lifestyle changes,” Epel said.
“These are changes we can maintain and sustain over the years.”
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