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But in the study, when participants viewed their stress response as helpful, their blood vessels stayed relaxed like this.

Their heart was still pounding, but this is a much healthier cardiovascular profile.

It actually looks a lot like what happens in moments of joy and courage.

Over a lifetime of stressful experiences, this one biological change could be the difference between a stress-induced heart attack at age 50 and living well into your 90s.

And this is really what the new science of stress reveals, that how you think about stress matters.

So my goal as a health psychologist has changed.

I no longer want to get rid of your stress. I want to make you better at stress.

And we just did a little intervention.

If you raised your hand and said you'd had a lot of stress in the last year, we could have saved your life, because hopefully the next time your heart is pounding from stress, you're going to remember this talk and you're going to think to yourself, this is my body helping me rise to this challenge.

And when you view stress in that way, your body believes you, and your stress response becomes healthier.

Now I said I have over a decade of demonizing stress to redeem myself from, so we are going to do one more intervention.

I want to tell you about one of the most under-appreciated aspects of the stress response, and the idea is this: Stress makes you social.

To understand this side of stress, we need to talk about a hormone, oxytocin, and I know oxytocin has already gotten as much hype as a hormone can get.

It even has its own cute nickname, the cuddle hormone, because it's released when you hug someone.

But this is a very small part of what oxytocin is involved in.

Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone.

It fine-tunes your brain's social instincts.

It primes you to do things that strengthen close relationships.

Oxytocin makes you crave physical contact with your friends and family.

It enhances your empathy.

It even makes you more willing to help and support the people you care about.

Some people have even suggested we should snort oxytocin... to become more compassionate and caring.

But here's what most people don't understand about oxytocin. It's a stress hormone.

Your pituitary gland pumps this stuff out as part of the stress response.

It's as much a part of your stress response as the adrenaline that makes your heart pound.

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