Let me start with the study that made me rethink my whole approach to stress.
This study tracked 30,000 adults in the United States for eight years, and they started by asking people, "How much stress have you experienced in the last year?"
They also asked, "Do you believe that stress is harmful for your health?"
And then they used public death records to find out who died.
Okay. Some bad news first.
People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43 percent increased risk of dying.
But that was only true for the people who also believed that stress is harmful for your health.
People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die.
In fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people who had relatively little stress.
Now the researchers estimated that over the eight years they were tracking deaths, 182,000 Americans died prematurely, not from stress, but from the belief that stress is bad for you.