That is over 20,000 deaths a year. Now, if that estimate is correct, that would make believing stress is bad for you the 15th largest cause of death in the United States last year, killing more people than skin cancer, HIV/AIDS and homicide.
You can see why this study freaked me out. Here I've been spending so much energy telling people stress is bad for your health.
So this study got me wondering: Can changing how you think about stress make you healthier?
And here the science says yes. When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body's response to stress.
Now to explain how this works, I want you all to pretend that you are participants in a study designed to stress you out.
It's called the social stress test. You come into the laboratory, and you're told you have to give a five-minute impromptu speech on your personal weaknesses to a panel of expert evaluators sitting right in front of you, and to make sure you feel the pressure, there are bright lights and a camera in your face, kind of like this.
And the evaluators have been trained to give you discouraging, non-verbal feedback, like this.
Now that you're sufficiently demoralized, time for part two: a math test.
And unbeknownst to you, the experimenter has been trained to harass you during it.
Now we're going to all do this together.