Stress is highly contagious. Simply observing someone else
in a stressful situation typically elicits an empathic
stress response in the observer
Empathic stress can be felt whether you’re observing a
stranger or an intimate partner, and via direct observation
or television
Happiness is contagious too. People who are surrounded by
many happy people are more likely to become happy in the
future
While stress may damage your health, positive thoughts are
able to prompt changes in your body that strengthen your
immune system, boost positive emotions, decrease pain and
chronic disease, and provide stress relief
While you can create happiness artificially by taking drugs
or drinking alcohol, for instance, the same endorphin and
dopamine high can be achieved via healthful habits like
exercise, laughter, hugging and kissing, sex, or bonding
with your child
By Dr. Mercola
If you're stressed out and you can't put your finger on
why, it might be worth considering the company you keep.
New research shows that stress is highly contagious, not just in
how you feel but in the way your body responds physically as
well.
If you surround yourself with others who are stressed (either
by choice or circumstance), it's probably affecting your mental
and physical health. And get this… the same holds true for
watching stressful situations on television.
'Astonishing' Demonstration of Empathic Stress
The new research, published in the journal
Psychoneuroendocrinology,1
revealed that simply observing someone else in a stressful
situation typically elicits an empathic stress response in the
observer.
For instance, when observing stressed participants (who were
asked to solve difficult arithmetic tasks and engage in
interviews) through a one-way mirror, 30 percent of the
observers experienced a stress response in the form of an
increase in the stress hormone cortisol.
When the observer had a romantic relationship with the
stressed participant, the emphatic stress response was even
stronger, affecting 40 percent. However, even when observing a
stressed stranger, 10 percent of observers felt similarly
stressed. The stress response was transmitted not only when
observers watched the event live, through a one-way mirror, but
also via video transmission.
About 24 percent of the observers had increased cortisol
levels when they watched a televised version of the stressful
event. One of the study's researchers noted that stress has
"enormous contagion potential" and called their results
"astonishing:"2
"The fact that we could actually measure this
empathic stress in the form of a significant hormone release
was astonishing… There must be a transmission mechanism via
which the target's state can elicit a similar state in the
observer down to the level of a hormonal stress response…
even television programs depicting the suffering of other
people can transmit that stress to viewers."
Why Your Health May Suffer from Empathic Stress
If you're often around stressed-out people, or you choose to
watch stressful programming on TV, your health could suffer.
Your stress level is a major player in your overall health,
impacting your risk of chronic health conditions like heart
disease, depression, and obesity.
But unlike other more obvious risk factors, like
over-indulging in junk food or not exercising, stress is more
insidious, subtly sneaking up on you over time, increasing your
risk of health problems even as you don't noticeably feel
sick or realize that your chronically stressed-out state is
slowly zapping away your vitality.
Stress turns ugly when it is either extremely severe, such as
facing combat or another traumatic scenario, or long-term.
It is the latter that poses a risk to many Americans, who
live in a chronically elevated state of stress and anxiety – and
often pass that stressful state on to those around them. Over
time, chronic stress may impair your immune system and cause a
number of detrimental events in your body, including:
Decreased nutrient absorption
Elevated cholesterol
Increased food sensitivity
Decreased oxygenation to your gut
Elevated triglycerides
Heartburn
As much as four times less blood flow to your digestive
system, which leads to decreased metabolism
Decreased gut flora populations
Decreased enzymatic output in your gut – as much as
20,000-fold!
Further, when your body remains in a stress-induced
"fight-or-flight" mode for too long, one of the most common
consequences of this scenario is that your adrenal glands, faced
with excessive stress and burden,
become overworked and fatigued. This can lead to a number of
related health conditions, including fatigue, autoimmune
disorders, skin problems, and more.
Stress has also been linked to
cancer by down-regulating immunosurveillance, potentially
triggering the growth of tumors, and even activating multidrug
resistance genes within cancer cells. In fact, stress, and by
proxy your emotional health, is a leading factor in the majority
of diseases or illnesses you can think of.
Birds Have a Unique Way of Handling Stress Better Than Humans
Stress responses in birds (and all vertebrates) are
remarkably similar to those that occur in humans. The same
hormones are involved, including increases in corticosteroids
(corticosterone in birds is basically the same as cortisol in
humans).
Also, like (many) humans, birds live a stressful existence,
foraging for food, breeding and raising offspring, facing
possible predation, and migrating into incredibly unpredictable
environments. Interestingly, researchers with the University of
California Davis' Birds and Seasonality Project have found that
certain songbirds, including Smith's Longspurs and White Crowned
Sparrows, which migrate to the Arctic to breed, have developed a
way to alter their stress response.3
The Arctic is clearly a very stressful, challenging
environment, which would ordinarily prompt an extreme stress
response. But the researchers found that the birds are able to
dampen, and in some cases, completely "turn off" their stress
responses, which essentially allows them to raise their
nestlings in the extreme conditions (if a high stress response
persisted, it might prompt the birds to abandon their nests).
The birds appear to be among one of few vertebrates with this
ability, although the researchers are still trying to figure out
exactly how the birds essentially flip off their "stress
response switch."
Happiness Is Contagious, Too
If stress is contagious, it would seem plausible that
happiness would be contagious, too, and research shows it very
much is. One of the latest studies toward this end examined the
emotional content of one billion Facebook posts and suggested
that while both positive and negative emotions seem to be
contagious, positive emotions are actually more
contagious than negative emotions.4
Other research has shown that people who are surrounded by many
happy people are more likely to become happy in the future. The
effect applies not only to those in close contact with the happy
person, but also extends out to three degrees of separation.5
For instance, in relation to one happy person:
The spouse has an eight percent increased chance of
happiness
The next-door neighbor has a 34 percent increased chance
of happiness
A friend who lives within a mile has a 25 percent
increased chance of happiness
Also like stress, happiness alters your physical health,
although in a positive instead of negative way.
Positive thoughts and attitudes are able to prompt changes in
your body that strengthen your immune system, boost positive
emotions, decrease pain and chronic disease, and provide stress
relief. One study found, for instance, that happiness, optimism,
life satisfaction, and other positive psychological attributes
are associated with a lower risk of heart disease.6
It's even been scientifically shown that happiness can alter
your genes! A team of researchers at UCLA showed that people
with a deep sense of happiness and well-being had lower levels
of inflammatory gene expression and stronger antiviral and
antibody responses.7
This falls into the realm of
epigenetics—changing the way your genes function by turning
them off and on.
What Happens to Your Cells When You Experience Happiness?
Positive emotions like happiness, hope, and optimism prompt
changes in your body's cells, even triggering the release of
feel-good brain chemicals. While you can create happiness
artificially by taking drugs or drinking alcohol, for instance,
the same endorphin and dopamine high can be achieved via
healthful habits like exercise, laughter,
hugging and kissing, sex, or bonding with your child. If
you're wondering just how powerful and effective this can be, a
10-second hug a day can lead to biochemical and physiological
reactions in your body that can significantly improve your
health. According to one study, this includes:8
Lower risk of heart disease
Stress reduction
Fight fatigue
Boost your immune system
Fight infections
Ease depression
According to Dr. Marianna Pochelli, a doctor
of naturopathic medicine:9
"As far as your brain, every thought releases brain
chemicals. Being focused on negative thoughts effectively
saps the brain of its positive forcefulness, slows it down,
and can go as far as dimming your brain's ability to
function, even creating depression. On the flip side,
thinking positive, happy, hopeful, optimistic, joyful
thoughts decreases cortisol and produces serotonin, which
creates a sense of well-being.
This helps your brain function at peak capacity.
Happy thoughts and positive thinking, in general, support
brain growth, as well as the generation and reinforcement of
new synapses, especially in your prefrontal cortex (PFC),
which serves as the integration center of all of your
brain-mind functions."
These physical changes in your cells lead to multiple net
benefits, including:10
Stimulating the growth of nerve connections
Improving cognition by increasing mental productivity
Improving your ability to analyze and think
Affecting your view of your surroundings and increasing
attentiveness
Leading to even more happy thoughts
A Simple Strategy for Boosting Your Happiness
Practicing "mindfulness" means that you're actively paying
attention to the moment you're in right now, helping you to keep
your internal focus. Rather than letting your mind wander, when
you're mindful you're living in the moment and letting
distracting thoughts pass through your mind without getting
caught up in their emotional implications. Mindfulness can help
to reduce stress-induced inflammation, and it's a strong example
of how you can harness your own sense of power and control to
achieve what you want in life, including a more positive,
happier mental state. Simple techniques such as the following
can help you to become more mindful:
Pay focused attention to an aspect of sensory
experience, such as the sound of your own breathing
Distinguish between simple thoughts and those that are
elaborated with emotion (such as "I have a test tomorrow"
versus "What if I fail my test tomorrow and flunk my entire
class?")
Reframe emotional thoughts as simply "mental
projections" so your mind can rest
Still, for many, happiness can be a poorly defined, elusive
goal. One way to think about happiness is to define it as
"whatever gets you excited." Once you've identified that
activity, whatever it is, you can start focusing your mind
around that so you can integrate more of it into your daily
life. If you feel stuck and don't know where or how to start, I
suggest reviewing these
22 positive habits of happy people.
Is Stress Holding You Back? Try This Technique to Set Yourself
Free
It's difficult to be happy when you're consumed by stress,
which is why regular stress management is crucial. For some,
this might include staying away from negative or overly stressed
individuals, or at the very least turning off the nightly news
if it is too upsetting, to avoid feeling empathic stress.
Ultimately, however, what you do for stress relief is a personal
choice, as your stress management techniques must appeal to you
and, more importantly, work for you. If a round of
kickboxing helps you get out your frustration, then do it. If
meditation is more your speed, that's fine, too.
Even having a good cry now and then may be beneficial, as
tears that are shed due to an emotional response, such as
sadness or extreme happiness, contain a high concentration of
adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) — a chemical linked to
stress. One theory of why you cry when you're sad is that it
helps your body release some of these excess stress chemicals,
thereby helping you feel more calm and relaxed. Energy
psychology techniques such as the
Emotional Freedom Technique
(EFT) can be very effective as well, by helping you to
actually reprogram your body's reactions to the
unavoidable stressors of everyday life.
This is important as, generally speaking, a stressor becomes
a problem when:
Your response to it is negative
Your feelings and emotions are inappropriate for the
circumstances
Your response lasts an excessively long time
You're feeling continuously overwhelmed, overpowered, or
overworked
When you use EFT, simple tapping with the fingertips is used
to input kinetic energy onto specific meridians on your head and
chest while you think about your specific problem -- whether it
is a traumatic event, an addiction, pain, etc. -- and voice
positive affirmations. This combination of tapping the energy
meridians and voicing positive affirmation works to clear the
"short-circuit" -- the emotional block -- from your body's
bioenergy system, thus restoring your mind and body's balance,
which is essential for optimal health and the healing of chronic
stress. You can view a demonstration below.
Copyright 1997- 2014 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.