Allostatic Load: From Chronic Stress To Repair

Allostatic load is the cumulative wear and tear on the body over time when under chronic stress. Its effects are evident and measurable through inflammation, cardiovascular strain, and autonomic dysregulation. This ninety-minute lecture discusses why allostatic load matters, how chronic stress reshapes physiology, what current research tells us, and how the body can move toward repair. Chronic stress has wide-reaching effects in modern society, causing both psychological and physiological burden long before overt illness appears. This talk is not about self-optimization; it is an informational lecture designed to support reflection on resilience, self-compassion, and the kinds of consistent, sustained choices that support and protect the healthspan. This seminar is for individuals who are interested in understanding the biological processes involved in stress and what the conditions for recovery and repair may actually look like.

Transcript

Hello everyone,

Thank you so much for joining me for this lecture.

The topic is reversing allostatic load,

The science of renewal and longevity.

If you're unfamiliar with my work,

I am a teacher here on Insight Timer,

My name is Kristen Astell,

And I do a monthly seminar series on the biomedical model and its integration with wellness practices.

This lecture is an informational session,

It's based on neuroscience physiology research.

It's not meant to feel diagnostic,

It's not meant to be clinical or overwhelming.

There's a lot of science to it,

But it's definitely not meant to feel overwhelming.

This session was originally presented as a live seminar style session,

It's been adapted into this audio format so that it can be shared more widely.

Before we get started,

I just want to remind you that this topic is going to touch on lived experience,

So things like your chronic stress,

Your early life experiences,

Work,

Caregiving,

Health challenges,

These are not abstract ideas.

So if anything feels familiar,

If it feels personal,

I want you to know that's not a sign that anything has gone wrong,

It's a sign that your body is responding intelligently to its history.

So that said,

Everything here is designed to translate well to audio,

And you're welcome to pause,

Revisit sections if you need to,

Listen to this at your own pace.

Okay,

Let's talk about why allostatic load matters so much in the first place.

So chronic stress is one of the most powerful health factors shaping modern illness.

It doesn't cause every disease on its own,

But it influences how nearly every system in the body functions.

We're talking about your immunity,

Your hormones,

Your cardiovascular health,

Your brain aging.

And we now know that chronic stress accelerates biological aging and increases your disease risk.

It shapes inflammation,

It disrupts your sleep,

It alters metabolism,

And it changes how resilient the nervous system is over time.

So when stress becomes chronic,

The body pays a price.

Not because it's failing,

But because it's been working too hard for too long.

And one of the reasons allostatic load is such an important concept is that it predicts real outcomes,

As you're going to see in the Whitehall studies later.

Higher allostatic load is associated with greater morbidity and earlier mortality,

Sometimes more strongly than traditional risk factors like cholesterol or body weight.

And that tells us something essential.

The cost of stress is not abstract,

It's measurable.

And there's another reason that this topic matters,

And this one is quieter,

But I feel that it's just as important.

And that's that understanding our stress biology is going to restore a sense of agency and compassion to us.

When we understand that our stress responses are biological adaptations,

We don't have to consider that they're personal failures.

That shame that we take on is going to begin to loosen.

People are going to stop asking,

Oh my god,

What is wrong with me?

And they're going to start asking,

What has my body been responding to?

And that shift alone,

I feel,

Can be profoundly healing.

So to understand why chronic stress has such wide-reaching effects,

Let's talk about how the body actually regulates stress.

At this point,

I think it's helpful to pause and clarify something that often causes confusion,

And that's the difference between homeostasis,

Which we've all probably heard about in high school,

And allostasis.

Homeostasis refers to your body's tendency to keep things within a narrow,

Stable range.

So we're talking about things like body temperature,

Blood sugar,

Your pH.

And in that model,

Health is often described as maintaining equilibrium,

Keeping things the same.

And allostasis expands this idea.

So instead of stability through sameness,

Allostasis describes stability through change.

And your body doesn't aim to stay static,

It aims to stay functional in changing conditions.

So your heart rate rises when you move,

It's going to slow when you rest.

Your cortisol rises in the morning,

And it falls at night.

Your immune activity shifts depending on threat,

Injury,

Recovery.

And these fluctuations are not failures of regulation,

They are regulation.

The problem is not movement away from baseline,

The problem is when the body can no longer return.

And this is where allostatic load becomes such an important concept.

It helps us understand what happens when a system designed for flexibility is forced into constant adaptation without sufficient recovery.

So health isn't lost because the body changed,

It's lost because your body doesn't get the chance to settle.

When your body has to keep adjusting,

Keep mobilizing,

Keep staying alert,

Without enough rest,

Safety,

Or resolution,

That adaptation becomes very costly.

And that cost is what eventually shows up as wear and tear across systems.

And this is an important distinction.

Allostasis itself is not pathology.

Your stress responses are not the problem.

Dysfunction is emergent when your system is pushed beyond its capacity to recover.

So overload,

Not stress,

Creates disease.

And once we understand allostasis,

We can talk about what happens when that adaptive system is under sustained demand.

So here's a simple way to understand allostatic load.

Your stress system is designed to be flexible,

To rise when something demands your attention,

And to fall again when the demand passes.

So,

Your normal day has stress peaks,

But it also has recoveries.

Your body mobilizes,

Your heart rate changes,

Your cortisol rises,

Your attention sharpens.

But then,

When it's safe,

Your system downshifts.

And that ability to rise and return is allostasis.

It's healthy.

It's intelligent.

Allostatic load happens when life keeps asking for mobilization,

But your recovery never reliably arrives.

So your body keeps adapting,

Because it has to,

And it never gets the chance to fully return.

And over time,

Your baseline begins to drift.

Your body starts living a little closer to being activated,

To being on,

Than it was ever meant to.

And that's where the wear and tear comes in.

Not because the system is malfunctioning,

But because it's being used constantly.

And this is why allostatic load isn't just stress in your head.

It's a whole body,

Across time,

Lifespan phenomenon.

And when you understand allostatic load,

That self-blame is going to soften.

Because many symptoms are not signs of weakness,

They're signs of endurance.

And it's important to understand that this isn't just going to live in one place in the body.

This is a network level impact.

So allostasis is going to function less like a machine,

And more like an orchestra.

It's going to have many systems,

Listening,

Responding,

Adjusting,

To keep the whole orchestra of you moving forward.

And I think one of the most important things to understand about allostatic load is that it doesn't belong to any single system.

It's not just a hormone issue,

Or a nervous system issue,

Or an immune issue.

Allostatic load lives in a network.

And when the body responds to stress,

Multiple systems activate together.

And they're going to be communicating constantly.

At the center is the HPA axis,

Alongside the autonomic nervous system.

Stress also shapes your immune inflammatory signaling,

Your cardiovascular tone,

Your metabolic and endocrine function.

And it reaches all the way to the cellular level as well,

Through things like mitochondrial strain and gene expression shifts.

And we'll talk about that,

You don't have to remember all that now,

We'll talk about that a little bit more later,

Those individual systems.

But what I want to emphasize is that none of these systems are acting independently.

They're coordinating.

They're going to respond together to the conditions of a person's life.

And this is why symptoms will often appear in clusters.

You'll experience fatigue,

Sleep disruption,

Inflammation,

Mood changes,

Metabolic shifts.

These aren't separate problems.

Everything is deeply interconnected.

So understanding this dynamic also is going to help us move away from self-blame.

Because when multiple systems are affected,

It's not because someone is failing at self-care.

It's because the body has been doing an extraordinary amount of work behind the scenes.

So,

As promised,

We'll dig a little bit more closely into these separate systems to understand their work within this network.

Okay,

So firstly,

Let's talk about the HPA axis,

Which is the body's primary stress hormone system.

Your HPA axis is this communication loop between the brain and the adrenal glands.

So when the brain perceives stress,

Physical,

Emotional,

Or environmental,

It's going to send signals that eventually result in the release of cortisol.

And cortisol helps mobilize energy.

It's going to sharpen attention.

It's going to support that short-term survival.

So in the short-term,

It's healthy,

It's adaptive.

The problems arise when this system is activated too frequently for too long without adequate recovery.

So over time,

The natural rhythm of cortisol can be disrupted.

So instead of rising in the morning and falling at night,

Your cortisol patterns may flatten and some people may experience elevated cortisol at night,

Others experience blunted responses where your system struggles to mobilize or settle appropriately.

And when this rhythm is disrupted,

Stress recovery becomes harder,

So your body stays alert when it should be resting.

And this can show up as sleep disruption,

Persistent fatigue,

Anxiety,

Irritability,

Or this feeling that many women in perimenopause have experienced of being wired but tired.

And this is one of the clearest examples of how allostatic load shows up physiologically.

It's also one of the reasons stress-related symptoms feel so pervasive and difficult to think your way out of,

Because this is biology.

It's not a mindset issue.

Let's talk about how the nervous system itself plays a major role in how stress is experienced and stored,

Because that is another big contributing factor.

So the autonomic nervous system has two primary branches.

The sympathetic system,

That's what we often call fight or flight,

It supports action.

And the parasympathetic system is going to support our restoration,

So our recovery,

Our emotional regulation,

Our digestion,

Repair.

And in a healthy system,

Ideally we want to move fluidly between these states throughout the day,

Right?

Activation when it's needed,

Rest when it's safe.

And under chronic stress,

This balance can shift.

So when the body spends too much time activated and not enough time in recovery,

We can shift into something called sympathetic dominance.

And when sympathetic dominance is present,

We often see reduced parasympathetic or vagal tone.

And this can show up as lower heart rate variability,

Which is simply a measure of how adaptable the nervous system is.

And the body may remain in this persistent fight or flight state,

Even when there's no immediate threat.

And because the system governs digestion,

Hormones,

Emotional regulation,

This disruption is going to ripple outward,

Like we talked about with that network level effect.

And this is why your chronic stress doesn't just feel mental.

It affects your digestion,

Your sleep,

Your emotional resilience,

Your hormonal rhythms.

And I know we're kind of digging into the ways things can go wrong right now,

But I want to offer you a moment of hope.

And this is important.

It's that nervous systems are highly plastic.

So even though we become dysregulated,

We can also relearn safety.

We can relearn rhythm.

We can relearn recovery.

And when nervous systems stay high,

Though,

It's going to have that network level effect.

Let's move on and talk about how the immune system behaves.

So let's talk about inflammation.

And I want to start by saying something really important.

Inflammation itself is not the enemy.

Inflammation is part of the immune system's intelligence.

This is how your body responds to injury,

How it responds to infection and threat.

And the issue really arises when inflammatory systems are activated too often for too long without adequate resolution.

So under chronic stress,

Your immune system is going to remain on high alert even when there's no infection to fight.

And in research,

This shows up as elevations in inflammatory markers.

We can see it.

And inflammatory markers are just indicators that your immune system is being repeatedly activated.

And one of the reasons this happens is because your immune system listens very closely to your nervous system.

So when your nervous system is going to signal danger over long periods of time,

Your immune system begins to respond accordingly.

And this is how psychological stress becomes biological stress.

In the brain,

Your immune activation also involves microglia,

Which contributes to things like brain fog,

Mood sensitivity,

And fatigue when that activation stays chronic.

So for many people,

Inflammation and immune issues are not going to be the result of one traumatic event.

They're reflecting the accumulation of life stress.

We're talking about things like caregiving,

Financial pressure even,

Social strain,

Health challenges,

Any long-term uncertainty as well.

And this isn't a failure of coping.

I just want to emphasize that this isn't a failure of coping.

This is just your body being asked to adapt for too long.

Let's talk about how this reaches all the way down to the cellular level.

So before we go any further,

I just want to pause and explain.

When I talk about epigenetics,

What in the world am I talking about?

Because this word gets used a lot and often without clarity.

Epigenetics does not mean that your genes are changing.

Your DNA sequence stays the same.

Epigenetics refers to how genes are regulated,

How strongly they're expressed,

Or perhaps whether they're quieted.

And a helpful way to think about this is genes are like the keys on a piano.

The piano is not going to change,

But which keys are played,

How often,

How loudly they're played,

All of that is going to vary.

So your stress,

Your sleep,

Your nutrition,

Your relationships,

Your movement,

Recovery,

They're all going to send signals that influence which genes are emphasized.

So when we talk about stress affecting epigenetics,

We're not saying that stress damages your DNA.

We're saying that stress can shift how the body prioritizes certain biological programs,

Often towards survival rather than repair.

And the important thing to understand is that epigenetic changes are dynamic.

They're responding to environment.

They're responding to rhythm.

They're responding to safety.

And I feel like this is why epigenetics is actually a really helpful field.

It's definitely not a fatalistic one in my view.

All right,

So let's shift for a moment and talk about how chronic stress affects biological aging.

We all have a chronological age.

That's the number of years we've been alive.

But we also have a biological age,

A reflection of how our cells and systems are functioning.

And our chronological and biological age don't always match.

So chronic stress acts as this biological signal.

It tells cells that conditions are demanding,

They're uncertain,

They're unsafe.

And your cells respond by prioritizing survival.

And over time,

This can influence how energy is produced,

How your DNA is repaired,

How your genes are expressed.

And at the cellular level,

We often see this increased oxidative stress,

Which is essentially more wear from metabolic demand.

So your mitochondria,

Which produce cellular energy,

Are going to become less efficient under sustained stress.

Your telomeres,

Which are the protective caps on chromosomes,

May shorten more quickly in chronically stressed environments.

And importantly,

Stress can alter that gene expression.

And again,

We're not changing the genes themselves,

But we're changing how loudly certain genes are turned on or off.

So it's not changing your DNA the same way radiation would,

For example.

It's changing the expression of those genes.

And researchers sometimes measure these changes using what are called epigenetic clocks.

And I want to emphasize that these clocks,

If you go looking into it,

These clocks are not destiny.

They're just estimates.

They're snapshots of biological patterning.

And here's a key point that I want to emphasize.

They're responsive to environment.

But these same systems that respond to stress also are going to respond to recovery.

And I just really want to emphasize that towards the later part of the lecture,

We're going to talk about the good news around safety,

Recovery,

Repair.

But right now,

We're kind of talking about the things that go wrong.

So I don't want you to become demoralized as you're listening to this.

There is some good news for you.

So this next area that we're going to talk about is the part that people recognize most readily,

I think,

Because this is where chronic stress shows up in everyday life.

It has very real effects on how we think,

How we feel,

How we experience ourselves in the day-to-day.

So many people notice changes in how their mind works when exposed to repeated chronic stress.

Brain fog,

Difficulty focusing,

Feeling mentally slower than they used to be.

Emotionally,

You might be feeling more reactive,

Easily overwhelmed.

Or even the opposite,

You might feel a kind of numbness or emotional shutdown.

Things like rumination,

Anxiety,

Reduced motivation,

Fatigue,

And even dissociation can appear.

And I want to be very clear that these are not personality flaws.

They're not signs of weakness or lack of discipline.

They are state-dependent.

They're responses of the nervous system and brain,

State-dependent responses.

So the brain is just responding appropriately to the conditions that it's in.

And in short-term and moderate stress,

The brain can actually sharpen.

Your attention is going to improve.

Your motivation can increase.

Your learning can feel temporarily easier.

And that's because stress hormones mobilize that energy and your focus in the short-term.

But when your stress becomes prolonged,

When it becomes unpredictable,

The pattern changes.

Your brain begins to reallocate resources away from long-term functions.

So your memory integration,

Your emotional regulation,

Your ability to have flexible thinking,

All of that's going to suffer.

It's going to reallocate those resources towards immediate survival.

And it's going to reallocate that,

Reprioritize that.

And what matters most,

I think,

Around this is that these changes reflect function,

Not permanent loss.

So again,

Your brain,

Nervous systems are highly plastic.

When stress physiology begins to settle,

When safety,

Predictability,

Recovery increase,

Clarity often improves and your emotional range can return.

So things like motivation,

Creativity,

They're going to reemerge and nothing essential will have been lost.

The system that has been adapting,

It can adapt again.

And we are getting to the point where we're going to start talking about recovery a little bit more.

But before we talk about repair,

I think it's important to widen the lens beyond the individual for just a moment,

Because allostatic load is not just an individual phenomenon.

So let's talk for a moment about how stress is shaped by environment and history,

By the we grow up in,

By demands placed on us over time.

Because our biology is not going to respond only to isolated events,

It's going to respond to our lived conditions.

And this means that allostatic load is not a personal failure.

It's not about being resilient enough or calm enough or disciplined enough.

It's about how systems adapt to sustained pressure.

So those things that we talked about,

Early life,

Early life stress,

Chronic uncertainty,

Caregiving burden,

Financial strain,

Illness,

Discrimination,

Any prolonged relational distress shapes how the stress system responds over time and develops.

So these influences are going to often operate quietly over years.

And this is why you have two people,

Two different people,

And they're going to face similar challenges,

But have very different physiological responses.

It's because their nervous systems have learned different expectations about safety and demand.

And I think that understanding these points doesn't remove any agency.

It restores compassion because healing requires context.

It requires patience,

And it requires approaches that honor where your body has been,

Not just where we want it to go.

And here's a hopeful part of this.

Even when our stress patterns are shaped by long histories,

They're not fixed.

Biology is responsive.

You're going to hear me say this 10,

000 times.

Your nervous system can learn.

It can relearn.

And regulation can be reintroduced gradually and safely.

So when we talk about reversing or reducing allostatic load,

We're not talking about forcing change.

We're talking about creating conditions that allow the body to recover.

And one place this broader context becomes especially clear is in early life development.

I want to take a moment to talk about early life stress,

And I want to do so carefully because discussing this topic does not ask you to revisit your past here.

We're doing this to simply explain how stress systems develop over time.

In research,

We often refer to something called adverse childhood experience.

And this term describes a range of early life stressors.

So chronic unpredictability,

Prolonged instability,

Any environments where safety wasn't consistent.

And when stress is present early in life,

The body adapts.

Stress response systems,

Including your nervous system and your HPA axis,

They're going to mature in a context where vigilance may be necessary.

And this means that the body learns how to survive the world it's in.

So if the world feels unpredictable,

The system learns to stay alert.

And over time,

This can lead to an earlier accumulation of allostatic load.

Not because anything went wrong,

But because the system was doing its job under demanding conditions.

And research shows that this can be associated with greater inflammation,

Altered cortisol rhythms,

Increased vulnerability to stress-related illness later in life.

And I want to be very clear about this.

When we're talking about allostatic load in this context,

Many people,

Myself included,

With early life stress go on to live meaningful,

Creative,

Connected lives.

Early stress increases risk.

It's not destiny.

So biology is going to remain responsive throughout the lifespan.

These same adaptations that once helped you cope are going to later feel costly.

And that doesn't mean that they were wrong.

It just means that they were context appropriate at the time.

So understanding this biology allows us to replace self-criticism with compassion.

So stress physiology is also shaped by ongoing conditions in adulthood.

And that includes our access to safety and resources.

So let's talk about socioeconomic stress.

So socioeconomic status,

Often abbreviated as SES,

Is not just a measure of income.

In health research,

SES reflects access to things like safety,

Predictability,

Healthcare,

Time,

Recovery.

And from a biological perspective,

Socioeconomic strain functions as a chronic stressor.

Because when resources are uncertain,

The nervous system receives ongoing signals of potential threat.

And this isn't really about acute emergencies.

I'm talking more like a prolonged vigilance,

Right?

So financial strain,

Job insecurity,

Things like unsafe housing,

Limited healthcare access.

These are conditions that are going to keep stress systems partially activated over long periods of time.

And research consistently shows that lower socioeconomic status is associated with higher baseline cortisol,

Elevated inflammation,

And greater allostatic load across the lifespan.

So the body is carrying the imprint of lived conditions.

And this isn't a reflection of effort,

Intelligence,

Personal responsibility.

It is a biological response to environmental demand.

So this is also bringing it back to childhood.

When socioeconomic strain is present early in life,

Those effects can be compounded.

Those effects that we discussed earlier can be compounded.

And even in adulthood,

That ongoing financial and social stress continues to shape stress physiology.

Understanding this helps explain why stress reduction can't rely solely on individual mindset or willpower.

And it's going to,

I feel,

Help us to replace self-judgment with accuracy.

And this is going to bring us to one of the most influential bodies of research on stress and health,

Which is the Whitehall studies.

So these were large,

Long-term studies,

One of the most important findings in modern health psychology.

They examined British civil servants,

And this began in the late 1960s,

And it followed people over decades.

And let's talk about who these participants are.

They're not people living in extreme poverty.

They're all employed.

They're housed.

They all have access to health care.

And what the researchers were interested in is not whether these people had jobs,

But what kind of jobs they had.

And the key variable turned out to be job rank.

And what job rank represented psychologically and biologically.

So as job rank decreased,

Rates of heart disease,

Chronic illness,

Early mortality increased.

And this wasn't a sudden drop-off.

It was graded.

So each step down the hierarchy was associated with worse health outcomes.

So what made these findings so striking is that the differences remained even after researches accounted for smoking,

Diet,

Exercise,

And other health behaviors.

So in other words,

This isn't simply about lifestyle choices here.

And the strongest explanatory factor turned out to be control,

Specifically autonomy,

Predictability,

Decision-making power,

And social support at work.

So people with more control and support had significantly better cardiovascular and mental health outcomes.

People with less control and less support had sustainably higher risk despite working for the same employer under the same health care system.

So from the perspective of allostatic load,

This makes sense.

Low control,

Low support,

These things are going to keep the nervous system in a state of heightened vigilance.

The body remains partially mobilized,

Scanning,

Anticipating,

Bracing,

Even when there's no immediate crisis.

And over time,

That vigilance accumulates,

Not always as stress we consciously feel,

But as wear and tear on cardiovascular,

Immune,

And metabolic systems.

So the Whitehall findings force us to confront a difficult but important truth.

Health is shaped not just by what we do,

But by the conditions in which we live and work.

And this doesn't mean that individuals are powerless,

But it does mean that telling people to manage stress better without addressing control,

Predictability,

And support misunderstands how stress biology actually works.

So in short,

The body is going to keep track of things like hierarchy,

Agency,

Safety,

Whether or not we are going to consciously label those experiences as stress.

And it records that information over years,

Over decades.

And I encourage you,

If this is interesting to you,

To go look at it,

Because I'm really not elucidating the breadth of this research here.

I'm just really kind of touching on it,

And there's so much more that I'm not speaking to here.

But there is one more concept from this research that kind of helps tie these patterns together that we'll talk about.

So researchers were able to identify a pattern they called effort-reward imbalance,

And this refers to situations where effort required is high.

But the rewards,

Recognition,

Compensation,

Things like meaning,

Security,

These are all going to be really low.

And in contrast to that,

When effort is balanced by adequate reward,

The physiological burden is going to be much lower.

And what the data showed was a clear relationship.

So as effort increases and reward decreases,

The risk of coronary heart disease rises.

And importantly,

These findings remain even after accounting for age,

Sex,

And job grade.

So this tells us something crucial.

This effect,

It's not about who people are.

It's about what their nervous systems are repeatedly being asked to endure.

And this brings us to one of the most important takeaways from allostatic load research,

And that is chronic stress is contextual.

It's not moral.

So the body is not punishing people for working hard.

It's actually adapting very intelligently to these conditions of prolonged imbalance.

Allostasis is about adaptation.

When that effort is continuously required without sufficient recovery,

Without recognition,

Without safety,

Your body is going to recalibrate around survival,

And that recalibration has a cost.

It's not a failure,

But it does have a cost.

So across the Whitehall studies,

We see the same pattern repeat.

Less control,

Less predictability,

And less social recognition.

These are all associated with greater physiological burden over time,

And that's not because people are weak.

It's because their biology is responsive.

So when we can understand stress through the lens of allostatic load,

The question shifts.

It's no longer,

Why can't this person cope?

It becomes,

What has this nervous system been asked to carry,

And for how long?

And all of this might sound heavy,

But this is where we're going to get to the hopeful part.

This is where the hopeful part of the science begins.

So the story of allostatic load is not a story of inevitability.

When we say that allostatic load is modifiable,

I'm not saying stress can be erased,

Or that history doesn't matter.

What I'm trying to say is that stress biology is dynamic.

So the systems involved in allostasis,

The nervous system,

The endocrine system,

The immune system,

These are designed to adapt across time.

The nervous system is plastic.

Plasticity means that patterns can be reinforced,

But it also means they can be retrained.

And this is true even after long periods of stress.

Not everything is going to be reversible though,

But many stress effects are reducible.

And research shows a lot of improvements in cortisol rhythm,

Inflammatory markers,

Autonomic balance,

Heart rate variability,

Even those epigenetic aging markers we talked about.

So these shifts are mostly going to occur when conditions change over time.

This is not an overnight process.

This is going to take some time.

It's going to take some sustained attention towards it.

And I think this brings us to one of the most important ideas in this entire lecture.

And that is,

When we're talking about stress biology,

Our trajectory matters more than history.

Because the body's not keeping score of the past stress in a moral sense.

It's really just asking one question and it's asking it constantly,

What is happening now?

And what should I prepare for next?

So that means that healing is not about undoing the past.

It's about creating enough signals of safety,

Predictability,

And support in the present for the body to begin reallocating resources away from survival.

So small shifts,

Repeated consistently,

Are what's going to matter.

So then the question becomes,

Can I erase my allostatic load?

But rather,

What conditions help my body begin to stand down?

Let's talk about what the science actually shows about how we do that.

And at the heart,

Kitty,

Quiet you,

At the heart of recovery from chronic stress is the brain's capacity to change.

Sorry about that.

My cat is having the allostatic load of chronic stress of not having a lap to sit in all the time.

So let's talk about neuroplasticity.

When we talk about recovery from chronic stress,

We're really talking about neuroplasticity.

And let's define it.

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to change its structure and its function in response to a repeated experience.

So under chronic stress,

Certain circuits within the brain are going to become over practiced.

Certain circuits in the nervous system are going to be over practiced.

Threat detection becomes faster.

Emotional reactivity is going to increase.

Prefrontal regulation becomes less efficient.

And that is plasticity working in the direction of survival.

But plasticity is not an inherently negative thing.

It's simply reflecting what the brain is being asked to do most often.

So when conditions change,

When the nervous system experiences enough safety,

Predictability,

Regulation,

Different circuits are going to begin to strengthen.

You're going to have stress reactive circuits quiet.

Prefrontal regions involved in things like inhibition,

Reflection,

Meaning making,

Are going to regain influence.

So emotional regulation improves not because your emotions disappear,

But because your brain is getting better at modulating them.

And that doesn't mean that stress isn't going to leave an imprint.

And it's not going to mean that recovery is fast,

That it's going to be linear,

Or even that it's going to be identical for everybody.

And what this means very simply is that learning and healing are possible.

Even after you've experienced long periods of stress,

Your brain's not going to lose its capacity to adapt simply because you've lived through adversity.

It's going to adapt to what it's repeatedly shown.

And one of the most direct ways we can see that recovery expressed is through the autonomic nervous system.

So we talked about the autonomic nervous system earlier.

One of the most measurable ways we see recovery from chronic stress is through the autonomic nervous system,

Specifically through vagal tone and heart rate variability.

So let's talk about what that is.

Vagal tone refers to how effectively the vagus nerve supports parasympathetic regulation,

Especially the ability to recover after stress.

Heart rate variability refers to the variation in time between heartbeats.

Heart rate variability,

Or HRV,

Reflects how flexibly the heart responds to these changing demands.

It's not going to be how calm someone feels.

This is more about recovery capacity.

In states of chronic stress,

HRV tends to be lower.

So that system stays in this narrow defensive range,

And it's going to prioritize vigilance over restoration.

And over time,

That is going to contribute to greater allostatic load,

And the encouraging finding about HRV is that it's not fixed.

Your parasympathetic activity can increase when the nervous system receives repeated signals of safety.

And this doesn't even require eliminating stress.

It requires improving recovery.

So what does that look like?

Practices like slow rhythmic breathing,

They're going to work because they directly engage baroreceptor reflexes and vagal pathways.

They create predictable bottom-up signals.

We'll talk about that more in a little bit,

What I mean by bottom-up,

That tell the brainstem and the body you're not under immediate threat.

And over time,

This is going to help recalibrate stress responses.

As autonomic regulation improves,

Your hormonal and immune systems are going to recalibrate as well.

So sleep is going to play a central role here.

Sleep is one of the primary regulators of cortisol rhythm.

And when sleep becomes more regular,

More restorative,

Cortisol patterns often begin to normalize.

Movement supports metabolic and immune resilience as well.

So it works because movement improves the communication between systems.

So gentle,

Regular movement is going to support your glucose regulation,

Your mitochondrial efficiency,

Your inflammatory balance.

And I just want to emphasize that sometimes we are like,

Oh my goodness,

That's going to fix me,

And we go hard right out the gate.

But I just want to emphasize that intensity is not required.

It's really predictability is what's going to matter more here.

Chronic stress is not going to just increase your inflammation.

It's going to reduce your immune precision.

So when stress decreases,

Your immune responses become more selective rather than constantly activated.

And this is one of the reasons that inflammation-related symptoms can soften over time.

Your hormones and your immunity,

They're not separate systems.

So cortisol in particular is going to be one of those bodies,

One of the body's primary immune regulators.

So when hormonal rhythms normalize,

Your immune signaling often becomes more precise rather than globally activated.

And that doesn't mean that all your symptoms are going to disappear,

And it's definitely not going to happen through willpower,

But it does mean that the body regains some flexibility,

And that flexibility is the foundation of health.

So going back to that gentleness,

Repair is not something we force.

It's something that we make possible.

So that's how our hormone and immune repair becomes possible.

Sleep's going to be a big deal,

And movement's going to be a big deal.

And those systems,

Your hormone and your immune system,

Deeply connected.

Let's talk about how these shifts also show up at the level of gene expression.

Let's go back to that epigenetic conversation we had earlier.

Gene expression is responsive.

It's going to listen to signals like stress,

Nutrition,

Sleep,

Movement,

And safety.

That's a key word here that I want you to remember.

If you remember nothing from this talk,

I want you to walk away with that word safety.

So when we talk about gene expression being responsive,

What do we mean?

We mean that biology is not fixed.

It's not fixed at the level of experience.

It's responsive to lived conditions.

So under chronic stress,

Certain biological pathways are going to become more active,

And that stress-related signaling is going to increase inflammation,

Metabolic strain,

Any threat-oriented responses.

And that's not because your body's malfunctioning.

It's because it's prioritizing survival.

It's doing what it's supposed to do.

What's important to understand is that when your stress decreases,

Those same pathways can also down-regulate.

And this is why lifestyle factors matter.

Not because they're morally good or bad,

But because they change the signaling environment that the body is responding to.

So nutrition,

Movement,

Rest,

Emotional safety,

All act as informational inputs to the system.

Sorry,

We're getting a storm incoming here.

I think I'm getting some thunder.

So epigenetic flexibility also helps explain differences in biological aging.

Under sustained stress,

Systems are pushed towards efficiency and short-term survival.

When those conditions improve,

Resources can shift back towards repair,

Maintenance,

Resilience.

So one well-known example of this comes from a study by Basen and colleagues.

It's published in 2013,

And in this study,

Researchers looked at patterns of gene expression before and after participants engaged in relaxation-based practices,

Which includes meditation.

So what they found is not,

It's not traumatic,

It's not mystical,

It was largely physiological.

So after periods of stress reduction,

There was a decrease in the expression of inflammatory gene pathways.

At the same time,

There was an increase in the expression of genes involved in mitochondrial function.

It's boosting energy metabolism,

It's boosting cellular repair.

So when stress signals decrease,

The body is shifting away from constant inflammatory readiness and toward efficiency and restoration.

Isn't that exciting?

I just think that's so cool.

It's measurable.

This is science that we can measure,

Right?

I just think that's,

When it comes to epigenetics,

I really do feel that it's a hopeful field.

It's really exciting.

So our gene expression is really responsive to our internal state,

And our biological priorities are going to shift when the nervous system experiences more safety and regulation.

So cool.

This is going to support the broader point that we've been discussing throughout this talk,

And that's that your body is responsive.

It's not broken.

It's going to do what it's meant to do.

So when stress decreases,

Even modestly,

Biology reallocates those resources accordingly.

This was shown within this study to be cumulative.

It has a larger,

Long-term cumulative effect.

The more you do it,

The better it is.

But it's responsive.

The nervous system is even plastic,

Even if you just do a little bit at a time.

It's still going to help you,

And the effects are almost immediate.

Let's talk about some evidence-based pathways.

We've talked about some of them already,

And it probably sounds very boring to hear about nutrition and movement.

We really want the the quick fix here,

But I want to pause on something important here before I move into evidence-based practices.

Many of the things we're about to discuss are simple,

But they're not always easy to shift into a habituated lifestyle.

They're really familiar,

And because of that,

They're easy to dismiss.

But I want to emphasize here that common knowledge is not the same as unimportant knowledge.

We know that when we get into a car,

Fatal accidents are common.

Yet,

And yet,

We multitask while driving.

We're going to text.

We get distracted by other drivers,

And we sometimes assume that because something is familiar,

It might not be meaningful,

And I want to reject that notion as we move forward.

So that said,

What does the research actually show helps to reduce allostatic load over time?

Let's talk about evidence-based pathways of regulation,

And these are not going to be quick fixes.

They're not hacks.

They're conditions that support regulation across that system level network.

Meditation and coherence practices.

They are going to be stabilizing that nervous system signaling that we talked about.

They're reducing sympathetic over activation and supporting parasympathetic tone over time.

This is lowering your baseline stress rather than just providing momentary relief.

Regular aerobic and resistance exercise supports allostatic regulation.

It's going to improve your metabolic efficiency and your inflammatory balance,

And again,

Let's just emphasize it's not about intensity.

It's about consistency and capacity.

Aerobic movement and resistance training support resilience at the cellular level,

Sleep consistency,

One of the strongest regulators of allostatic load,

And regular sleep is supporting that cortisol rhythm,

Your immune timing,

Your metabolic repair.

Let's talk about food.

Anti-inflammatory nutrition supports allostatic load by reducing chronic immune activation.

It stabilizes your blood sugar,

It supports your mitochondrial function,

And it lowers your baseline inflammatory signaling.

Meaning and social connection.

This is a really big one that people sometimes miss because they're really dismissed as soft factors,

But they directly influence stress biology.

So when we think about things like perceived safety,

A sense of belonging,

Having purpose in your life,

These things reduce threat signaling,

They lower long-term physiological burden,

And all of these pathways work because they change the environment the body is responding to.

They're reducing allostatic load not by force,

But by restoring regulation in the body.

Let's talk about cognitive appraisal for a second,

And before we do that,

I want to pause and explain two terms that you will hear me use,

And you heard me mention one of them earlier,

Which is top-down and bottom-up regulation.

So let's explain what in the world I mean by top-down and bottom-up regulation.

Your top-down regulation refers to processes that start in the brain,

Particularly in areas like the prefrontal cortex,

And they're going to move downward through the nervous system.

So this includes things like your conscious interpretation of things,

When you do meaning making,

When you reframe something,

And intentional thought.

So when we reappraise a situation,

We're telling ourselves a story about what's happening,

Or we might intentionally change how we think about stress,

And that's when we're using those top-down mechanisms.

Bottom-up regulation,

That works in the opposite direction,

So it starts in the body.

This is where your breath work helps,

Right?

Your heart,

Your gut,

Your muscles,

Your autonomic nervous system,

That's going to send signals upward to the brain.

That slow breathing,

The rhythmic movement,

Temperature,

Wrapping yourself in a warm blanket,

Touch,

Posture,

Any sensory safety cues,

These are all bottom-up inputs,

And they don't rely on thinking.

They shift physiological state first,

And I want to emphasize that both pathways matter,

And in a regulated or moderately stressed system,

They often will work together seamlessly.

Here's where confusion often arises,

Especially when we're having conversations about chronic stress.

So under conditions of high or prolonged stress,

Top-down regulation doesn't just disappear,

But it can become a lot more effortful,

It's less reliable,

And it's less accessible.

And that's true especially when we're under an acute load.

So the prefrontal cortex,

That area in the front of your brain,

Which supports things like perspective taking,

Your meaning making,

Your inhibition,

Cognitive flexibility,

That's going to become intermittently down-regulated when your nervous system is prioritizing for survival.

And so that doesn't mean that your intelligence,

Your motivation,

Or your insight is gone,

It just means that the system is conserving resources.

So top-down strategies that require that executive functioning may still help,

And for many people they do,

But they may not work consistently or they may require more effort than usual.

So when we talk about cognitive appraisal,

The way we interpret and relate to stress,

We're talking about a top-down tool from the brain to the body,

And this work is real.

Research demonstrates that cognitive appraisal absolutely can influence stress physiology.

When people are able to interpret stress as manageable,

When they know that it's temporary and they can find meaning in it,

The physiological stress response will often become less damaging.

So in some studies,

People who reframe stress show healthier cardiovascular responses,

And they're going to have better long-term outcomes.

So for many people,

Cognitive appraisal isn't only helpful,

It can be very stabilizing,

It's orienting,

It's grounding.

So for example,

Let's say you're about to give a presentation and oh gosh,

My heart is racing.

One interpretation is you could be like,

Oh my gosh,

Something's wrong,

I'm anxious,

I definitely can't handle this.

A top-down reframe might be,

My body is mobilizing my energy because this matters to me.

I really care.

Perhaps after a difficult experience,

This is a different example,

One person might say,

This suffering is absolutely pointless.

Whereas another person might say,

That was really painful,

But it clarified what really matters to me.

So you can see in those examples,

Nothing about the event is changing,

But the meaning assigned to it is changing,

And it changes how the nervous system stores and responds to the experience.

So meaning making is a powerful top-down regulator.

Cognitive appraisal is very powerful as a top-down regulator.

And what I want to emphasize here is that there's nuance when we discuss cognitive appraisal and reframing techniques,

Meaning making,

Because I think this is where sometimes people get stuck feeling like they have to be pressured into toxic positivity,

Right?

So why don't you just think differently about it?

Why don't you just be more grateful?

Why don't you just shift your perspective on it and look at all you do have?

And when you're looking at something on the outside,

It's really easy to be in judgment for people who are struggling to use that cognitive appraisal.

And it's also really easy for us to be in judgment for ourselves.

Like,

Man,

Why can't I just shift my thinking around this?

Like,

I can have the knowledge that perhaps my perspective is a little off here,

But I am feeling so gosh darn dysregulated.

I just can't bring myself back into a place where I feel balanced around this,

Where I feel calm,

Where I feel okay,

Where I can stop ruminating.

And that's because cognitive appraisal relies heavily on the prefrontal cortex.

So under conditions of high allostatic load,

That system is intermittently taxed.

And that doesn't mean it's offline,

It's not damaged,

But it's definitely working under constraint.

So this is why for some people at times,

Being told to change your mindset can feel very frustrating,

Or even invalidating.

Not because the strategy is wrong,

But because the system is already carrying too much.

And that's not a failure of insight or motivation.

It's a state issue.

It's not a character issue.

So thinking alone often isn't enough to override survival physiology when you have a system that is still bracing.

But thinking can still help alongside other forms of regulation.

And that,

I feel,

Preserves accuracy and agency.

So what research and clinical experience suggest is this.

Top-down strategies tend to work more reliably when the nervous system has some degree of physiological support.

So as your sleep improves,

As your autonomic balance increases,

As inflammation softens,

As stress hormones become more rhythmic,

That access to cognitive flexibility in the prefrontal cortex tends to improve.

And then reframing and meaning-making don't feel as forced,

They're going to feel natural.

So the takeaway is not that cognitive approaches are wrong or effective,

It's that timing and support matter.

So recovery from allostatic load isn't about choosing between body-based work,

Getting proper sleep,

Focusing on how much sugar you're putting in your body,

How much and what types of exercise you're doing,

Meditation,

Right?

It's not about choosing between that body-based work or cognitive work.

It's about integration.

It's about sequencing and helping the system stabilize enough so that the mind can fully participate again.

When our physiology and cognition work together,

Cognitive appraisal isn't just about forcing optimism.

It's about integrating reality with capacity,

And that's where genuine resilience emerges.

So what we're really talking about here is a shift in state.

We're not talking about a change in personality.

Through these techniques,

We're talking about a shift in how the body is orienting to the world.

Under chronic stress,

The body organizes around defense.

Resources are allocated toward protection,

Vigilance,

What needs an immediate response right now.

And that's adaptive.

It's intelligent.

It's the body doing what it needs to do to get through demanding conditions.

However,

When safety becomes more consistent,

Something begins to change.

The body can gradually redirect that energy away from constant defense and toward restoration,

And this is when repair becomes possible.

Vigilance is the nervous system scanning for threat.

Coherence is the system communicating efficiently within itself.

As vigilance softens,

Signaling between the brain,

The body,

The immune system,

All of that becomes more coordinated.

And this is often experienced not as excitement or alertness,

But as just a steadiness.

So under a chronic load,

The system gets overloaded,

And that's not because it's weak,

But because it's been working for too hard for too long.

When that load decreases,

Adaptability returns.

The body regains flexibility.

And this is the most important point here.

Healing does not begin with effort.

It begins with safety.

When the system no longer has to prepare for threat,

It can begin to repair.

This isn't a transformation that we force.

It's a state we allow.

And when the body shifts from survival to repair,

Change follows naturally.

This is why practice matters.

This is why we have a meditation practice,

Because it's not about effort.

It's about shifting our state.

And what matters most is not even necessarily the practice itself.

It's the state the practice produces.

Biology is exquisitely sensitive to state.

So when the nervous system spends more time in regulated states,

Your heart rate variability tends to improve.

And higher heart rate variability reflects greater flexibility in the autonomic nervous system.

It's measurable.

You can use tools from organizations like HeartMath to literally measure your heart rate variability on devices that you can see in real time.

They're really,

Really powerful tools to help.

And when we have that greater flexibility in our autonomic nervous system,

Our system can respond and recover rather than staying locked in that vigilant defensive state.

And when we shift,

Cortisol output is going to become lower.

It's going to be more rhythmic.

And that's one of the clearest indicators that the stress system is no longer operating in emergency mode.

When your nervous system is less reactive,

Your emotional regulation becomes more stable.

There's a reduced need for rapid defensive responses.

Your emotions move through without overwhelming the system.

And this is the key biological shift.

When the body is no longer prioritizing survival,

Your repair mechanisms can come back online.

That includes cellular repair,

Immune recalibration,

Metabolic recovery.

So practice matters not because it fixes the body,

But because it reliably shifts the body into a state where biology can just do what it already knows how to do.

And how we approach our practice turns out to matter just as much as what we do.

Remember earlier,

I mentioned that our consistency matters much more than our intensity.

And that's one of the most important principles in nervous system recovery.

The body learns through repetition,

Not by force.

If you have an already overwhelmed and stressed system,

Intensity is just going to overwhelm it even more.

So consistency teaches safety.

The nervous system is a pattern recognition system.

It doesn't ask,

Was that really impressive?

It asks,

Did this happen again?

So repeated experiences,

Even very small ones,

Shape baseline state over time.

Which means that in a system already carrying high allostatic load,

Stronger input is not always better.

It's those gentle,

Predictable signals that tend to be more effective than dramatic interventions.

And this is why practices that feel almost too simple often work best.

That consistent meditation that you have every day is going to shift both function and structure within your brain,

For example.

So that safety isn't a single event.

It's going to accumulate gradually over time.

And each moment of regulation adds to the body's internal evidence that threat is not constant.

And it's that evidence that allows repair mechanisms to come back online.

When we choose consistency over intensity,

It doesn't mean that we're doing less.

It means we're working with the nervous system.

And that's where real change begins.

It might feel like you're doing less.

What is this,

You know,

Five minute a day meditation really doing?

Over a long time,

That value really adds up.

So I just encourage you to really look at the habits that you have in your every day and examine it through this lens of consistency versus intensity.

This is a really great way to arrive at a different way of understanding longevity when we can think about these patterns over the long term.

Because when we talk about longevity,

We often think in terms of years lived.

But biologically,

Longevity is better understood probably as adaptability.

It's not about just how long this bodily system lasts.

It's how well it adjusts.

And a resilient system,

It can respond to stress and then return to baseline.

It has that capacity.

It activates when it's needed and then recovery is possible.

That's what protects your tissues,

Your organs,

And your systems over time.

That adaptability is what slows biological wear.

Allostatic load represents that cost of unresolved stress.

And when we can reduce that load,

The body experiences less cumulative wear and tear over time.

That means few inflammatory hits,

Less metabolic disruption,

Slower cellular aging.

And that's what people often experience as feeling more stable,

More clear,

More themselves.

And healthspan is not about never being challenged.

It's about preserving the body's ability to repair.

It's not about eliminating stress.

It's about allowing your repair mechanisms to not be consistently activated.

So they don't have to work in crisis mode.

When they can function in maintenance mode,

That is so much more efficient for your body.

So we're not talking about avoiding life.

We're talking about living with enough internal safety that your body can meet life without breaking down.

And that's what resilience looks like at a biological level.

Our healthspan,

The amount of good quality healthy years that we have in our life,

Asks a different question than lifespan.

It's not just how long we live,

But how much flexibility and repair the body has along the way.

And we're coming towards the end of this lecture,

And I want to name a few key ideas for you to carry with you.

If there's one thing that I want you to take away from today,

It's this.

What we've been talking about is real,

Measurable biology.

Allostatic load,

The chronic wear and tear on the body throughout the lifespan,

Is not a metaphor.

It shows up in hormones,

Immune markers,

Cardiovascular strain.

It's not imagined stress.

It's something the body keeps track of.

And your body's not just responding to isolated events.

It responds to patterns,

To duration,

Predictability,

Your recovery.

And over time,

Those patterns shape how systems function.

I also want to bring it back to the Whitehall studies and remind you that how stress affects the body depends on context.

So access to safety,

Control,

Support,

Meaning,

These are all going to change biological outcomes.

This is why two people can experience similar stressors and have very different physiological trajectories.

Also,

The presence of allostatic load does not mean that your system is broken.

It means that it's adapted.

And because it adapts,

It can also recalibrate.

Repair doesn't erase the past,

But it can shift the trajectory forward.

And finally,

Compassion isn't just emotional or moral.

It's biological.

When the body receives signals of safety,

Predictability,

And care,

Regulation is going to improve.

That applies to how we treat others and how we treat ourselves.

So understanding stress biology isn't about blame or self-optimization.

It's about meeting the body with accuracy,

Context,

And compassion.

And that in itself is a form of repair.

I want to end this by bringing us back to the experience of being in a body.

And before we close,

I want to offer one gentle question.

And this isn't something to solve.

It's not something to analyze.

It's just something to notice.

What is one small shift your body might be asking for right now?

Not something you should do.

Not something driven by discipline or self-improvement.

Just something small that would feel supportive and safe.

Something that signals care.

And you don't need to answer immediately.

You don't even need to act on it today.

I think sometimes even noticing is enough.

Because when we listen in this way,

We're not forcing change.

We're letting the body participate.

And that too is a form of regulation.

So I'll just leave you with that question.

Before we end,

I want to share what's coming next.

Beginning in 2026,

I'll be hosting a 12-month sound mind science seminar series here on Insight Timer.

These are monthly,

Research-informed.

They're grounded in lived experience.

You'll be able to see examples on a PowerPoint if you join.

And we're exploring neuroplasticity,

Safety and regulation,

Hormones and rhythms,

Sleep and repair,

Coherence and heart rate variability,

And movement as nervous system signaling,

Inflammatory and immunity,

Epigenetics,

All the things that we talked about today.

Trauma and vigilance,

Connection and meaning.

And then we'll end up closing the year talking about healthspan and longevity again.

So really,

All of the things that we discussed in this lecture today,

So much more can be said about all of those different areas.

And this next year,

If you liked this lecture and you were like,

Boy,

I kind of wish that she hadn't really grazed that topic,

Or I would love to know more about the HPA axis,

Or I want to know more about neuroplasticity,

You can.

We're doing it in 2026.

I will have 12 lectures on all of those things.

And I just want to remind you that these aren't self-optimization talks.

This is not about fixing what's broken.

They're really about understanding how the body adapts and how we can support it in returning from survival to repair.

So each seminar is going to be deeply compassionate.

It will,

Of course,

Be research-informed and hopefully,

At the end,

A little spacious for you to have some room for reflection rather than pressure.

And if this approach resonates with you,

I'd love for you to follow along here on Insight Timer so we can keep building on these ideas together.

And I'm really excited for it.

And thank you for listening today,

Truly.

And if you have any questions in the future or now,

My inbox is open here on Insight Timer.

You can find me and I'm happy to answer to the best of my ability.

I hope you have an amazing day,

Whatever it is that you're doing.

And if you never hear from me again,

Have a beautiful life.

Take good care of yourself.