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Stress is good for you?

The article in Women’s Health Magazine is entitled “Find Your Stress Sweet Spot” and it says that “certain pressure-filled situations… can be good for your health.” One of the examples they cite is an “occasional public speaking gig.”

Hmmm…

“There are good and bad types of stress. The bad kind is chronic and uncontrollable, like the tension caused by an unhappy marriage or a sick relative,” says Edward Calabrese, Ph. D., a toxicologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “But there are a lot of positives associated with short bursts of stress that ease up quickly,” such as being stuck in a snarl of traffic or sweating through a presentation at work.

What is standup but “short bursts of stress that ease up quickly?”

Could this explain why so many comics live happy, healthy lives, sometimes into their nineties?

They cite studies by researchers who study aging, some of whom “even go so far as to conclude that low-intensity stress could actually help extend your life.”

So… when you’re dying up there, you’re actually extending your life. Seems paradoxical, but perhaps not.