The Cumulative Stress Hypothesis. NDP 168

Are you aware of the stress in your life?  Can you FEEL it when stressors are building up and you think you may pop? Do you ever feel like you’re right on the verge of a meltdown?

I think most of us are familiar with these scenarios. We can only take so much stress.

When I was an ecologist, I had a vision for my life’s work. I planned on studying how aquatic ecosystems resist or integrate stressors before they break down. Some streams were beautiful. Full of a diversity of life, clean water, and complex habitat. Other systems were homogenous. Devoid of most life. Ugly and plain. 

The difference, I hypothesized, was stress. 

I wanted to test the hypothesis that ecosystems integrated stressors, meaning they didn’t change, up to a point beyond which everything changed. In other words, a natural system would resist change until it experienced too much stress. After that point, or threshold, the ecosystem would change entirely and likely never return to the previous condition.

I call this the Cumulate Stress Hypothesis and, though I retired from being an ecologist, I now apply the same model to human systems. Individuals and communities. 

The Cumulative Stress Hypothesis suggests that a human system, individual or collective, will resist a shift from homeostasis by integrating stress. However, beyond some threshold of accumulated stress drastic and irreversible changes to the system will occur that are deleterious. 

In a community, peace becomes war, cooperation becomes competition, and life becomes death.

We all experience stress in various forms. 

To effectively integrate small stressors without inducing dramatic shifts to our livelihoods we need to be healthy. Essentially, being healthy is maintaining a state of minimal stress BELOW some threshold. Small stressors like job changes, mild sickness, or even moving to a new city don’t cause much harm because our healthy state facilitates the absorption of these changes.

The problems arise when a small stressor pushes us over the threshold. 

Many of us, and most communities, are operating just below the threshold. This is too close for comfort. When the accumulation of background stressors is very close to the threshold we run the risk of drastic change. The closer we get the more risky a blowup gets. 

I argue that the maintenance of individual and communal human health requires us to stay well below our Cumulative Stress Threshold. 

Doing so requires an effort or practice.

For individuals, this is a combination of a healthy diet, exercise, mental health management including meditation and mindfulness, maintenance of relationships, and general awareness of all of these things.

For communities, this means having some form of healthy government, affordable amenities, good infrastructure, and balanced economies.

A healthy practice helps us minimize the accumulation of stress. 

In essence, this is how we maintain health, happiness, and contentment. It is also how we minimize suffering. I can imagine a world where many more humans can do this. Once we change ourselves, we can change our systems. Changing our systems is how we change the world.

Other science episodes:

Facts

Science Is Not the Truth

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