Hormesis: Why Some Stress Is Actually Good For You
Stress is not always bad for the organism experiencing it.
Trees, for example, get stronger when the wind blows them around. They grow a special kind of stress wood in their load-bearing trunk that can help move and position them for optimal light. The wind stressor helps them reach full maturity.
When stress makes an organism more robust, it’s called hormesis.
What Is Hormesis?
Hormesis occurs when a stressor in the right dose makes an organism stronger and healthier. Pharmacologists initially coined the phrase while working with harmful substances.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb defines the term for us in his book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder:
Hormesis: A bit of a harmful substance, or stressor, in the right dose or with the right intensity, stimulates the organism and makes it better, stronger, healthier, and prepared for a stronger dose the next exposure. (Think of bones and karate.)
If you’ve seen the movie The Princess Bride, you’ve watched hormesis in action. Remember when Wesley challenges Vizzini to a battle of wits using poisoned wine? Wesley puts poison in both of their cups because he has spent the last few years building up an immunity to Iocane powder by taking small doses over time.
That’s hormesis - a stressor in the right dose makes an organism stronger.
Examples of Hormesis
Small Doses of Stress That Make You Stronger
What is exercise, if not a stress on the body, to make it stronger? Your body needs stress to stimulate muscle growth and tissue repair.
Fasting is another example. When you’re sick, your appetite disappears - your body naturally fasts to get healthy again.
The stress that comes from an approaching deadline is the reason you’re reading this article right now. A deadline is a self-imposed stressor that helps you instead of hurting you. Without a deadline, it would be a miracle if I got anything done.
Ice baths are another great example. Tony Robbin’s morning priming routine includes a cold water plunge (I take a cold shower after a workout, and it’s fantastic). This stressor kicks the body into high gear.
You wouldn’t know that a small amount of stress can make you stronger based on what you hear from mainstream media and self-help gurus. They know that humans don’t like subtlety. It’s much easier to sell you a solution to a uniformly negative “stress” problem than it is to explain that the degree of stress matters. Too much stress is harmful, yes. But in small doses, it’s good for you.
A Lack Of Stressors Can Be Harmful
If you want to become the best of the best at something, you actually need a certain amount of stress. Taleb talks about how the best horses in horse racing lose when they race against slower horses and win when they race stronger rivals.
I’ve seen this with my beloved hockey team as well. The players step up and play great against great competition while losing against objectively lesser opponents.
Not only is stress not all bad, the absence of stress can hurt you. Here’s what Taleb writes in Antifragile:
Depriving systems of stressors, vital stressors, is not necessarily a good thing, and can be downright harmful… Undercompensation from the absence of a stressor, inverse hormesis, absence of challenge, degrades the best of the best.
Remember, the consequences of stress are dose-dependent. Too much stress is debilitating - a hurricane will rip a tree out of the ground. But not enough stress, and you lose your edge.
So the next time you’re feeling unproductive or out of it, don’t assume it’s because you’re too stressed to get anything done.
It could be the opposite - maybe you don’t have enough stressors to get you up to speed in the first place.
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Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.