We experience multiple stressors daily, some of them on a personal level, some of them on a more existential level. You could be stressed from rushing to work, from feeling sandwiched between caring for children and aging parents, or from feeling a loss of purpose or meaning in a rapidly changing world. The way you were thinking about stress 10 years ago is probably different today, as stressors have multiplied, and the different sources of stress intersect, creating more chronic and unconscious stress in our bodies. We often feel we have little control.
Research shows our reaction to stress can alter our regulatory systems, affecting our metabolic behavior and also impacting cellular aging. The good news is our bodies are far more resilient than we may believe.
At the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where I co-lead the Aging, Metabolism, and Emotions Center, we’ve spent decades focusing on ways to shift internal mechanisms of stress. More recently, we’ve studied interventions designed to improve positive emotions and increase our stress threshold. We’ve found that these not only help us perceive less stress, but build our resilience to it.
In the field of geroscience, which focuses on slowing aging to extend healthspan, we look at biomarkers, small windows into the mechanisms of our biology. These hallmarks of aging allow us to crudely predict what’s happening to our telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of our chromosomes, to our mitochondria, those batteries inside each of our cells that drain and dampen from chronic stress, and more. We know that excessive exposure to stress exacerbates these markers: telomeres grow shorter, and our mitochondria mount a response, leaving us exhausted and depleted at the end of the day.
Yet there is a beautiful story running inside all of us: every marker is malleable. Epigenetics, the way the environment and your behavior can affect your genes, your telomeres, and even inflammation, are all systems that can be improved. Our bodies hold a kind of plasticity that allow us to restore these daily markers.
Two of the better known ways to help reduce stress on our bodies are sleep and exercise. Exercise triggers a kind of hormetic stress, a healing state that turns on neurogenesis and improves stem cell function. This kind of rapid onset of acute distress, through a physical challenge, such as running or high-intensity interval training, or even a cold shower, launches a healing response that supports longevity and stress recovery.
At UCSF, we’ve also been studying mind-body practices to promote emotional well-being and impact the stress response. These include meditation, Wim Hof breathing, and guided breath work practice. Waking up and going to bed with a positive attitude also appears to be a buffer. In a review paper led by Alexandra Crosswell, we showed that regardless of the mind-body practice, the act of slowing down into restorative activity signals safety to the body, producing a physiological response. Internally, we see gene expression patterns shift towards growth and maintenance repair, with higher telomerase and less inflammatory and stress-related activity. And we see these interventions take a big chunk out of stress and depression, even weeks later.
The body is agnostic to exactly what practice you’re doing. They worked equally well. The goal is to choose one you like, understanding that these states produce healing from emotional distress we experience throughout our lives, and handing us back some control over them and their effect.
DOC 2025 Faculty Elissa Epel, Ph.D, is an international expert on stress, well-being, and optimal aging and a best-selling author. She is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, at the University of California, San Francisco, where she is Vice Chair of Psychology and directs the Aging Metabolism Emotions Center.