Who says pressure only harms health
谁说压力只会危害健康
If you aren’t already paralyzed with stress from reading the financial news, here's a sure way to achieve that grim state: read a medical-joumal article that examines what stress can do to your brain. Stress, you'll learn, is crippling your neurons so that, a few years or decades from now, Alzhe-imer's or Parkinson’s disease will have an easy time destroying what's left. That's assuming you haven't already died by then of some other stress-related ailment such as heart disease. As we enter what is sure to be a long period of uncertainty, the downside of stress is certainly worth exploring. But what about the upside? It's not something we hear much about.
如果你从阅读经济新闻中感到的压力还不足以让你崩溃,那么有种方法一定会让你达到这个状态:去读医学杂志，看看压力对你大脑的影响。你将明白，压力这东西会使你的神经崩溃，并且使得阿尔茨海默病或者帕金森氏病更容易在今后几年甚至几十年后找上你。由此可以肯定,到时你并不会死于其他与压力有关的疾病，如心脏病。当我们可以确信，在很长一段时间内都不会有确定的理论的时候，研究压力的坏处是很有必要的。但是益处呢？没有 人告诉我们。
In the past several years, a lot of us have convinced ourselves that stress is unequivocally negative for everyone, all the time. We've blamed stress for a wide variety of problems, from slight memory lapses to Ml-on dementiaand that's just in the brain. We’ve even come up with a derisive nickname for people who voluntarily plunge into stressful situations: they’re adrenaline junkies."
在过去的几年里，我们中的大多数人相信压力只会给人带来负面影响。在很多问题上，无论是轻微的记忆丧失还是完全的老年痴呆症,我们都把黑锅推给压力来背——而这仅仅是大脑的毛病。我们甚至嘲笑那些人，他们自愿投身到紧张这样一种状态:他们被称 为“肾上腺素狂热者”。
Sure, stress can be bad for you, especially if you react to it with anger or depression or by downing five glasses of Scotch. But what's often overlooked is a common-sense counterpoint: in some circumstances，it can be good for you, too. It's right there in basic-psychology textbooks. As Spencer Rathus puts it in Psychology: Concepts and Connections, “some stress is healthy and necessary to keep us alert and occupied.” Yet that’s not the theme that’s been coming out of science for the past few years.
当然,压力对你来讲可能是不好的,尤其是当你生气或抑郁或 喝下5杯苏格兰威士忌的时候。但是，一个常识性观点常常被忽视： 在某些情况中,压力对你来说也可能是件好事。在基础心理学课本中就有这种说法。就像斯宾塞雷萨斯在《心理学:概念和联系》说的那样，“有些压力是健康的并且是必需的，以此来使我们保持警惕和有足够的注意力。”但是这个理论在过去的几年中并没有科学依据。
The stress response “the body’s hormonal reaction to danger, uncertainty or change” evolved to help us survive, and if we learn how to keep it from overrunning our lives, it still can. In the short term, it can energize us, “revving up our systems to handle what we have to handle，" says Judith Orloff, a psychiatrist at UCLA. In the long term，stress can motivate us to do better at jobs we care about. A little of it can prepare us for a lot later on, making us more resilient. Even when it’s extreme, stress may have some positive effects—which is why, in addition to posttraumatic stress disorder, some psychologists are starting to define a phenomenon called posttraumatic growth. “There's really a biochemical and scientific bias that stress is bad, but anecdotally and clinically, it's quite evident that it can work for some people，"says Orloff. “We need a new wave of research with a more balanced approach to how stress can serve us.” Otherwise, we’re all going to spend far more time than we should stressing ourselves out about the fact that we're stressed out.
压力的反馈——身体荷尔蒙分泌对危险、不确定或者改变的反应，通过逐渐演变帮助我们生存下来，如果我们学会阻止压力透支我们的生命,它仍然可以起作用。短期内，压力可以使我们更有活力,加州大学洛杉矶分校的精神科医生朱迪斯欧乐夫说重新激活我们的身体系统,去处理我们不得不处理的东西。”长期内，压力可以促使我们在工作上做得更好。一点点的压力可以促使我们将来应对更多的压力，使我们更具备适应能力。即使当压力到了极限，它也可能有某些积极效果——这也就是为什么一些精神科医生除了确定创伤后应激障碍这个概念,又开始界定另一种现象,即创伤后成长。欧乐夫说:“生化科学观点确实存在偏见,他们认为压力是不好的,但是民间偏方和临床验证确实表明，压力对一些人是有好处的。我们需要更合理的方法来进行新一轮的研究,以使压力更好地服务于我们。”否则,我们就要花费更多的时间来弄清楚压力，这会把我们搞得精疲力尽。
When I started asking researchers about “good stress' many of them said it essentially didn t exist. “We never tell people stress is good for them,” one said. Another allowed that it might be, but only in small ways, in the short term, in rats. What about people who thrive on stress? I asked people who become policemen or ER docs or air-traffic controllers because they like seeking out chaos and putting things back in order. Aren’t they using stress to their advantage? No, the researchers said, those people are unhealthy. “This business of people saying they ' thrive on stress’？ It’s nuts" Bruce Rabin, a distinguished psychoneuroimmunologist, pathologist and psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, told me. Some adults who seek out stress and believe they flourish under it may have been abused as children or permanently affected in the womb after exposure to higb levels of adrenaline and cortisol, he said. Even if they weren't he added, they’re "trying to sat-isfy” some psychological need. Was he calling this a pathological state, I askedsaying that people who feel they perform best under pressure actually have a disease? He thought for a minute, and then: “You can absolutely say that. Yes, you can say that.”
当我开始询问研究者们“压力的益处”时,他们中的大多数说这个基本上不存在，其中一个人说:“我们从不告诉大众压力对他们有益。”另外一个人认为压力可能有好处，但是仅仅存在于很少的情况下，例如短期内在老鼠身上出现的情况，那些以压力为乐的人的情况如何呢？我问道—— 那些因为喜欢在混乱中寻找答案并使事物重新回归秩序的人,他们难道不是认为压力对他们是有利的吗？研究者们说，不,那是一些不健康的人。布鲁斯拉宾告诉我,他说这种人说他们‘以压力为乐’？真是疯了。”他是匹兹堡医学院著名的病理神经学家、病理学家及精神病学家。一些人寻找压力并且认为他们能从中得到快乐,他们可能在童年时期遭受过虐待或者在母亲子宫内长期受 到高肾上腺素和皮质醇的影响。他接着说,即使他们没有过这些遭遇,他们也要“企图得到”某种心理上的满足，我问道:他们这种情况就是病理状态吗？即那些感觉自己在压力下才能表现最好的人事实上是有病的？他想了片刻,然后回答道:“绝对可以这么说，是的,你可以这么说。”