Make the most of the benefits of the “poison excitement”.

Shenzhen Translation Bureau is its compilation team, focusing on technology, business, workplace, life and other fields, focusing on introducing new foreign technologies, new perspectives and new trends.

Editor’s note: High-dose toxicants are harmful to organisms, while low-dose toxicants are beneficial to organisms. This biphasic dose effect is defined as the toxicant excitement effect. According to the toxic excitement effect, short-term stimulation can bring long-term benefits. Getting out of the comfort zone briefly and under stress can make you stronger. This article is translated from Medium, author Andrew Merle, the original title is “The Long-Term Benefits of Short-Term Stress”, I hope to inspire you.

Short-term stress will bring you long-term benefits

“Those who can’t kill us will only make us stronger.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

It turns out that Nietzsche is right. This sentence expresses the concept of “poison excitement effect”.

The toxic excitement can be traced back to 1884, when German pharmacologist Hugo Schulz observed that small doses of poison can stimulate yeast growth. The true term “hormesis” was first coined by Chester Southam and John Ehrlich in 1943, when they noticed that from the redwood tree Extracts from the extract can improve fungal metabolism at low concentrations. In simple terms, Hormesis is generally defined as a phenomenon in which a chemical compound negatively affects an organism at high doses (such as growth and development inhibition), but it exhibits a beneficial effect (such as stimulating growth and development) at a low dose.

Scientists now find that short-term emergency “stress” is great for people’s health, as long as the stress subsides at some point, not the long-term.

For example, people have known for a long time that exercise is good for us, but it is not clear why. Poison excitement may be the reason.

If you exercise intensely all day long, your body may eventually collapse. But short periods of exercise (such as high-intensity interval training or HIIT) can put enough stress on the body to activateYour survival genes. Once the stress response begins to work, your body will recover, even stronger than before.

An obvious example is weightlifting. Lifting weights can make your muscles tense, and then the muscles can be sore, which can strengthen your arms. However, if you lift weights too often or too hard, it can cause serious injury to your body. The key is to find the right amount.

A person’s only 15 minutes of vigorous exercise per day can reduce the risk of heart disease death by 40% and all-cause mortality by 45%.

Besides exercise, here are some other scientifically proven methods to get the benefits of toxic excitement.

Hot and cold exposure

Slight heat stress has a therapeutic effect, the best example is a sauna.

In fact, the sauna can simulate the effects of exercise on the body-increasing core temperature, promoting sweating, and increasing heart rate.

While prolonged exposure to overheating is harmful, short-term exposure can be of great benefit.

A large Finnish study found a strong link between saunas and reducing deaths and diseases. Men who sauna two or three times a week are 27% less likely to die of cardiovascular-related diseases than men who do not sauna. Men who steam sauna four to seven times a week are 50% less likely to die of cardiovascular-related diseases. In addition, people who regularly sauna are 40% less likely to die early for various reasons.

Regular saunas have also been shown to reduce the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease by 65% ​​(again, the more days in a sauna you have, the better). Saunas can also lower blood pressure and reduce inflammation in the body And reduce anxiety and depression symptoms.

The duration of each sauna does not have to be very long, it can be best kept for about 20 minutes (in a dry Finnish sauna with a temperature of at least 174 degrees Fahrenheit), there is no need to keep it for more than 20 minutes.

short-term stress will bring you long-term benefits To enhance the effect, you can also jump into cold water immediately after steaming like a Finn. This further increases the burden on the cardiovascular system, but does not pose a risk to healthy people.

The cold bath itself has some significant benefits. Feeling cold for a short period of time will activate the protective brown fat in the body, which will lead to weight loss and increaseImmune function, reduce stress and anxiety.

Of course, you definitely don’t want to be frostbite or cause your body temperature to be too low, then a cold shower of five minutes a day can achieve this effect. Exercise in the cold is especially beneficial, you can try running outdoors in the winter or swimming in cold water.

Eat more plants

We know that eating vegetables is healthy, and the toxic excitement can explain the reason behind it.

Longevity and anti-aging expert Dr. David Sinclair says eating “stressed plants” is one of the most effective ways to extend life.

short-term stress will bring you long-term benefits What does stressful plant mean?

Plants face many external pressures, such as the risk of drought or fungal attack, or even being eaten. But unlike humans, plants are rooted in the ground and cannot escape harm.

Therefore, they produce a variety of chemicals to protect themselves. When people ingest these substances, it actually helps protect us from the stresses of daily exposure to harsh environments, such as air pollution or excessive ultraviolet radiation.

Plants rich in these chemicals can activate human cell protection mechanisms, a phenomenon known as xenohormesis. Listed below are some foods and beverages, and the substances they contain.