How can stress be positive?
Stress can be devastating. Prolonged stress can seriously damage our mental, physical, and social health, and short-term stress doesn’t seem to help much either. Personally, I find it infinitely harder to focus and be productive when a threatening deadline is approaching me. So, shouldn’t we use all means to alleviate stress and prevent it from occurring in the first place? Well, although you shouldn’t purposefully procrastinate to stress yourself more as ‘more motivation,’ there are indeed some benefits to being stressed.
Through research, it appears that acute stress--or short-term stress--specifically can improve cognitive function; on rats, “significant, but brief stressful events caused stem cells in their brains to proliferate into new nerve cells” that increased mental performance “two weeks later,” (Sanders). As Kaufer describes, such acute stressful stimuli can prime the brain to be more alert and thus function better.
In terms of memory, it’s generally believed that chronic stress only degrades working memory performance because such stress “elevates levels of glucocorticoid stress hormones, which suppresses the production of new neurons in the hippocampus,” (Sanders). With less neurons in the region of the brain dedicated to working memory, it makes sense that memory ability decreases as a result of long-term stress hormones. However, as Kaufer shows, acute stress yields different results. Acute stress stimuli that evoked a similar amount of stress hormones “doubled the proliferation of new brain cells in the hippocampus,” (Sanders). In other words, short-term stress increased the amount of brain cells in the hippocampus which allows for increased memory performance. This is supported by the fact that the rat subjects performed better on memory tests two weeks after being exposed to the stressful stimuli. Over time, short- term stress appears to benefit cognitive function.
“Warrior” vs. “Worriers”
Interestingly, there’s a genetic aspect to this all. Some people are predisposed to, biologically, perform better under stress. As Stein and Newman elaborated in their paper, variations in the COMT gene have distinct effects on our physiological stress response; “[Val] alleles are associated with an advantage in processing aversive stimuli.” People with the Val allele of this gene demonstrate increased performance of working memory under stressful situations, while people with the Met allele seem to have decreased working memory abilities when stressed. This is due to the Val allele allowing for increased efficiency of dopaminergic neurotransmission. In other words, the Val allele results in a “beneficial increase in extracellular dopamine” that results in improved working memory when under stressful conditions (Stein).
These people with the Val allele thrive under stress and are thus deemed “warriors.” Conversely, those with the Met allele perform better in general--without threatening stimuli--and are considered “worriers.” So, you may inherently have better working memory when stressed; If you are a “warrior,” forms of stress can definitely benefit your performance in a variety of situations.
Conclusion
That being said, stress isn’t always either good or bad for you. Short-term stress can benefit one’s cognitive function later on, and certain people will inherently have increased cognitive function when under stress, but this doesn’t mean you should always maximize your stress levels. Large amounts of stress can definitely take its toll on your mental, physical, and social health, as described in many other articles on this website; chronic stress is dangerous. And, other certain people perform less under stress. As a takeaway from this article: don’t stress too much about being too stressed sometimes. All forms of stress aren’t all bad, especially for certain people.
Works Cited
Sanders, R. (2015, July 9). Researchers find out why some stress is good for you. Berkeley News. https://news.berkeley.edu/2013/04/16/researchers-find-out-why-some-stress-is-good-for- you/
Stein DJ, Newman TK, Savitz J, Ramesar R. Warriors versus worriers: the role of COMT gene variants. CNS Spectr. 2006 Oct;11(10):745-8. doi: 10.1017/s1092852900014863. PMID: 17008817.
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