Is stress good for you?

As weird as it may sound, it is actually the truth. Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist, explored a new research finding in her TED Talk: "How to Make Stress Your Friend." Her finding: stress can only have a negative health consequence if you believe it will. McGonigal suggests that instead of fearing stress, we should befriend it. Below are some of her points regarding "acute," "short-term," and "moderate" stress.

1. Stress corresponds with a lower risk of death.

In her talk, McGonigal refers to a study done by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Using
the responses of 29,000 participants from a 1998 survey on stress levels, stress management, and perceptions on the effect of stress on health, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, researchers compared instances of death among them through 2006. Surprisingly, they found that participants who reported a lot of stress and believed it had a big impact on health faced several health issues (an almost 43 percent increased rate of premature death). On the other hand, those who reported a lot of stress and believed that it had nothing do with health showed the best health compared to even those who reported having little to no stress.

2. Stress boosts the production of neurons that may improve performance.

A study at the University of California found that stress can, in fact, serve as a catalyst to help you face a challenge. Scientists put lab rats in a stressful situation and found that the stress prompted stem cells in the brain to grow into neurons. Two weeks later, these neurons served to improve the rats' performances on learning tests. “Some amounts of stress are good to push you just to the level of optimal alertness, behavioral and cognitive performance,” explains Kaufer, one of the researchers on the team. “I think intermittent stressful events are probably what keeps the brain more alert, and you perform better when you are alert.”

3. Stress may strengthen the immune system.

McGonigal explained a research study by Dr. Firdaus Dhabhar at the Stanford University which showed the correlation between stress and the immune system. Short-term stress prompts adrenal glands to prematurely release hormones that alert "rested" immune cells in organs which cause them to move to "battle stations," where they will be needed if there is a wound or an infection.

4. Stress can make you more social.

A study at the University of Freiburg shows that stress can, in fact, make you more social. Researchers gathered 72 male students and divided them into groups of stress condition and control condition. Students in the stress condition were prompted by a sequence of events called the "Treir social stress test" to induce stress. The participants were then paired to play games that tested them on their trust of others, sharing, and risk-taking. Researchers discovered that the subjects showed a willingness to trust their partners and a readiness to share.

5. Stress can improve learning.

A study in the journal, Naturwissenschaften, noticed how male bowerbirds learned new sounds when they were caught -- concluding that bowerbirds demonstrated enhanced learning capabilities under stress. Researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health furthered the speculation when they conducted an experiment to compare learning abilities in stressed and unstressed males. Half of the male participants were asked to put their hands in ice-cold water for 60 seconds, which caused stress. The participants were then asked to do two learning experiments -- an eye blink test and a virtual navigation test. Participants who were under stress did far better than those who weren't stressed.

6. Stress may improve memory.

Researchers at the University of Buffalo found that swimming caused rats stress. Using this information, they forced a group of rats to swim for 20 minutes while another group remained dry. Immediately after, they measured the performance of the rats in a maze. After a few trails of the maze test, rats who were forced to swim made fewer mistakes than the dry ones. After looking more into the comparison, researchers noticed that the neurotransmitter glutamine (known to improve memory) increased in the rats who swam. Similarly, researchers at New Mexico State University asked students to look at images almost identical to each other in rapid succession and were asked to note the differences between them. A group underwent a stress-inducing procedure and was asked to take a similar test with different images. Researchers noted that the before and after of the students under stress was significantly different -- with the after showing better performance.

7. Stress may help you connect with your instincts.

Another study spiked the cortisol levels of students by asking them to give a five-minute videotaped presentation, do a five-minute interview and then count backward from 1,022 in steps of 13, all in front of judges whose expression stayed flat throughout. The students then performed two tasks relating to categorizing circles and bars on a computer screen. The first task required them to explain specific reasons why they categorized the shapes while the second task required them to simply share which category they thought the shapes belonged to. Researchers noted that the more stressed out the students were, the better they did on the second task, which took the worry away from the facts and focused more on their guts.

You can watch McGonigal's talk below: