

The History Behind the Science of Stress - drjohnson
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/07/07/325946892/the-secret-history-behind-the-science-of-stress

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tokenadult
This is a very important story, which I heard on the radio while driving
yesterday. Most of what we think we know about stress and its effects on
health, and especially about "Type A personality" and health, is skewed by how
the research programs were developed in the 1950s through the 1970s. Various
forms of adverse environmental influences that can be categorized as "stress"
do have general health effects, but not all stress is bad at all levels of
stress, and sometimes stress co-occurs with other influences on health that
are actually more important than stress itself.

A free article on the Pub Med Central website, "The 'Father of Stress' Meets
'Big Tobacco': Hans Selye and the Tobacco Industry," Am J Public Health. 2011
March; 101(3): 411–418.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3036703/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3036703/)

doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2009.177634

tells more of the background discovered by health researchers digging into the
trove of tobacco industry documents that were disclosed as part of the tobacco
industry settlement with state governments in 1998.

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PaulHoule
To avoid the politics, something that turned up in later research is that the
thing that correlates to bad outcomes (i.e. heart disease) is hostility more
than ambition.

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robg
And to think the science of sleep is just really getting started. Stress and
sleep are two sides of the same physiological coin and basal responses at
that. Sleep well and manage stress to optimize health, productivity, and
happiness. Yet, I know I'll spend the next decade showing the data to support
that sentence.

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panabee
We should all hope health wearables arrive sooner. The sooner we get devices
that accurately capture and measure personal health data (e.g., stress levels,
cholesterol, blood pressure, glucose levels), the sooner we consumers can
identify cause-and-effect relationships and determine the optimal behavioral
patterns for maintaining health.

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robg
It depends on what you want. Accuracy and price are at cross purposes. Our
biggest fear is the glut of cheap devices now is undercutting the long-term
value for true health applications.

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ejain
You can have an accurate step counter at a low price. The problem is that the
step counter is being sold as a device that knows how well you sleep and how
many calories you burn.

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stevenbedrick
A wonderful read on th subject is Robert Sapolsky's "Why Zebras Don't Get
Ulcers":
[http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780805073690-1](http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780805073690-1)

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hammock
No mention of eustress.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustress](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustress)

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robg
What is the _objective_ data to support that concept?

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hammock
There is a list of references at the bottom of the article.

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a8da6b0c91d
This article mentions that there was tobacco money and then does a lot of hand
waving insinuation that Selye was wrong. I don't think that's the case. As far
as I understand it he remains a giant in the field and his work continues to
be built on.

Selye was willing to say some people were overstating the role of tobacco in
isolation as a cause of disease. So? I happen to think he was right.

I read Sapolsky's "Why Don't Zebras Get Ulcers?" it confirmed Selye's major
ideas. It was extensively end-noted with modern research.

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michaelochurch
What I've read and understood is that the stress associated with low social
status (i.e. open plan offices for a programmers, whose work requires more
focus and privacy) is extremely toxic (depression, anxiety disorders,
cardiovascular load) but that stress _itself_ isn't inherently toxic. For
example, if you work 70 hours per week but you enjoy the work, it doesn't hurt
your health. Technically speaking, all exercise is _stress_ but not unhealthy
(in fact, the opposite).

If anything, our bodies interpret our social status by stress, which means
that good stresses (e.g. a workout, a hard problem) can have positive effects.

I don't think it's even controversial that the negative stresses coming from,
e.g., open offices and subordinate work contexts, are extremely toxic. It's
just that physical stress isn't _prima facie_ dangerous.

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nostrademons
I suspect that this varies a lot by person and their internal attitudes. I
don't associate open plan offices with low social status, nor do I let other
people define what my social status is. As a result, this is not a major
source of stress for me. Now, I put all sorts of pressure on myself about
living up to my own personal standards, but the particular concerns that you
raise and assume are universal barely even register in my head.

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sheepmullet
I used to get stressed out in open plan offices in my 20s. I was only running
at ~25% productivity compared to when I worked on my own projects at home or
took the day off and worked from home. The reason I was stressed was because
of my own expectations. My employers have never had an issue with my
performance. It's just I knew I should be able to get 3-4x as much done each
day and I was beating myself up over it.

These days I don't mind that I am much less productive than I could be. I do a
couple of hours of really focused work early in the morning before the rest of
the office arrives and I use the rest of the day to socialise, network, go to
meetings, help the junior devs, and research.

