Three Ways Stress is Good For You

Seems like we're always hearing bad things about stress, right? What would you say if I were to tell you that stress in small doses can actually be good for you. Hear me out on this- here are three examples:

1. Stress helps boost your brainpower. Low-level stress stimulates the production of chemicals called neurotrophins that help the neurons in your brain connect. And that stress can either be psychological OR physical. In regular people terms, researchers think that being stressed out about something (like your kids) might help you focus just like exercising, which is a physical type of stress.

2. Stress boosts your immune system...but only short term. When you start to get stressed out about something, your body produces extra chemicals that boost your immune system in case it has to deal with an injury or infection. But on the flip side, you definitely don't want to be stressed all the time because that can have the reverse effect and be bad for your immune system.

3. Stress right now helps you with future stress. What this means is that dealing with small amounts of stress gets you ready for larger amounts of stress later on. Believe it or not, this is actually one of the ideas behind Navy SEAL training- SEALs are forced to deal with stressful situations so they won't panic during combat situations.