The science of staying healthy in stressful times

The Gumption Report on Stress: Neuropsychology, evidence-based exercises, and ways to measure.

Thanks for all the love you showed for my last post about The Human Stress Response. Today we will cover everything science tells us about what we can do about Stress.

This is a collection of the latest evidence in neuropsychology, functional/lifestyle medicine, and clinical data to help you deal more effectively with the unprecedented burdens of stress in our modern culture.

There has been a revolution in medicine concerning how we think about the diseases that now afflict us. It involves recognizing the interactions between the body and the mind, the ways in which emotions and personality can have a tremendous impact on the functioning and health of virtually every cell in the body.

Sapolsky, Robert M.. Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping (Third Edition)

Please bookmark this page and refer to it when you need inspiration to deal with the ebbs and flows of stress in your life.

In this report, I will cover:

Step 1: Inner Work: What is your stressor? How do you deal with it?

• How can we know the difference between an external stressor and an internal psychological trap?

• The fascinating research behind personality, and the major traits associated with higher stress response.

• How to map anxiety loops and eight examples to inspire you to build greater agency.

Step 2: Habits: Proven coping methods, their limitations, and when to use them.

• 7 Evidence-Based exercises proven to calm the brain in moments of stress

• What limitations do exercise and meditation have on stress? When do they work, how long do their benefits last, and how much do we need?

• How depression and anxiety are linked through stress.

Step 3: Clinical Data: How do we measure stress in our bodies? How do we know if what we are doing is working?

• Why is blood cortisol not the best way to measure stress? What tests are better?

• What validated surveys can we use to track psychological and occupational stress though?

Bonus Appendix: Outlines the science of how stress impacts Nutrition, Sleep, Exercise, Relationships, and Addiction.

In this report are 42 citations from studies published in notable scientific journals or a snippet from one of the following books. Click on the footnotes to dive deeper into any piece of information you find interesting.

The following books are the ones I used for my research. Dig into any of them for further reading.

• The Myth of Normal (and The Body Says No) by Gabor Mate

• Why Zebras don’t get ulcers by Robert Sapolsky

• Settled, by Chantalle Donnelley

• Unwinding Anxiety, by Judson Brewer

Below is a comprehensive summary of Stress, how it shows up in the body, and how to tackle it in modern life.