By Daniel J. Levitin, Thrive Global, January 28, 2020
Stress is also an emotion, one that we share with other animals and with one another across the life span, although the causes of stress can be quite variable. Chronic stress is especially harmful. Stress is also highly variable—what would stress out one person another takes in stride, and vice versa.
Stress can have a substantial impact on longevity. Consider an experiment with Pacific salmon. After swimming upstream to spawn, and releasing tons of glucocorticoids because of the stress, they die. It’s not because they’re exhausted, or for some other biologically preprogrammed reason— rather, they experience rapid aging because of the production of those stress hormones. When researchers removed the adrenal glands of the salmon, which release all those glucocorticoids, the salmon didn’t die after spawning.
As biologist Robert Sapolsky says,
“If you catch salmon right after they spawn . . . you find they have huge adrenal glands, peptic ulcers, and kidney lesions, their immune systems have collapsed . . . [and they] have stupendously high glucocorticoid concentrations in their bloodstreams.
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