Neha Pathak, MD, FACP, DipABLM: Welcome to the WebMD Health Discovered podcast. I'm Dr. Neha Pathak, WebMD's chief physician editor for health and lifestyle medicine. For many of us, the stress in our lives feels like the enemy, something we want to dodge at all costs. But what if we've been thinking about stress all wrong?
In this episode, we're taking a fresh look at stress through a new lens—the surprising idea that certain types of stress are not only helpful but absolutely essential for living longer, healthier, and happier lives. From boosting our cells' ability to repair everyday damage to revving up our internal cleanup processes, our bodies are equipped with remarkable defense systems that come alive under just the right amount of pressure.
Today, we'll explore how modern life often deprives us of beneficial stressors, like bursts of physical activity or challenges that push us just slightly outside of our comfort zones, and why chronic, never-ending stress is a completely different beast.
We'll discuss how simple tweaks to our daily routines can spark these good stress pathways, leaving us more resilient, energized, and better prepared to handle life's ups and downs. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by stress but recognize that some stress is actually really important for our health, you won't want to miss this conversation.
First, let me introduce my guest, Dr. Sharon Bergquist. Dr. Bergquist is a board-certified internal medicine physician, research scientist, lifestyle medicine pioneer, and author of the book The Stress Paradox: Why You Need Stress to Live Longer, Healthier, and Happier. Welcome to the WebMD Health Discovered podcast, Dr. Bergquist.

Sharon Bergquist, MD: I'm delighted to be here.

Pathak: So before we dive into the science, I'd love to hear about your own health discovery and what inspired you to write The Stress Paradox. What was the turning point in your journey or career that made you rethink your approach to stress?

Bergquist: I've been practicing internal medicine now for 25 years, and the overarching question my patients have is: How do I stay healthy? How do I avoid depending on medications? And how can I age well so that I can be around for my grandchildren? Even though those are seemingly simple questions, in the modern world we live in—a world that's nudging us toward sickness—they're actually very hard to answer in a practical way.
That triggered for me an absolute obsession with how we can reimagine and rethink healthcare. How can we create a system that puts patients on a path to disease prevention, aging well, and less reliance on medications and the healthcare system? That led me on a journey—not only implementing different things in my practice but also conducting research to understand the pathways that build health, not just contribute to disease.
I started designing lifestyle programs that help people accomplish their goals and looking at biomarkers to catch disease at earlier stages. This has been my inspiration, and it’s been an incredible journey with remarkable outcomes for my patients and in my personal life.

Pathak: As you're talking, what resonates with me is that most of us think about health as the opposite of stress in our lives. I'd love for you to unpack that—thinking about stress as harmful versus the idea you're challenging: that stress can be good. Can you help us understand the difference?

Bergquist: Stress, as a medical concept, was discovered about 90 years ago. Even though we've learned so much since then, the predominant association remains with how it was originally discovered—as a threat and an alarm system. That’s how we understand stress. We think of it as fight or flight.
In modern life, we’re no longer running from saber-tooth tigers, but we often react as if we are. A lot of research has focused on understanding the harms of chronic stress. But there are different stress responses in our body. Beyond the alarm system triggered by the autonomic nervous system, we also have a stress response system at the cellular level.
This cellular stress response happens on a different timescale—not in split seconds but over hours, days, or even a lifetime through epigenetic changes. Brief stress creates long-lasting changes in our bodies. The purpose of these cellular stress responses isn’t to harm us; it’s to help us adapt to our environment and become stronger so that the next time we encounter stress, we’re better equipped to handle it.
We need to understand stress in a broader way. Yes, chronic stress—the kind we’re exposed to every day—can harm us. That’s unquestionable. But there are also certain types of stress, called hormetic stress. The term "hormesis" comes from a Greek word meaning “to excite.” These beneficial stressors help us adapt, and we need them to build resilience to the very stress we’re trying to avoid in our lives.

Pathak: Let’s unpack that further. Tell us about how good stress works—the science behind it and how it helps us live longer.

Bergquist: When we activate cellular stress responses, we’re activating our body’s natural ability to heal. Our body can heal itself, but we’re not giving it the right stimulus to do its job. Brief stressors—hormetic stressors—activate what I call the “four R’s”: Resisting damage.
Repairing damage. Recycling damaged components. Recharging cells by creating more energy in the body.

 

This is crucial because if we ask what leads to disease and aging, the answer lies in changes at the cellular and molecular levels. Inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and DNA damage all play a role. On any given day, there are about 10,000 injuries to our DNA—that’s seven a minute! Our body is constantly working in the background to repair itself. Stress is how we activate these defenses, staying balanced and resilient.
Right now, we’re not activating these healing responses. We’re out of balance—getting damaged by our environment without countering it with our body’s built-in capability to become stronger and healthier. This is the most powerful medicine we have at our disposal, hidden in plain sight.

Pathak: How does this apply to mental and emotional stress as well?

 Bergquist: If you go back to what leads to our mood getting impaired—if our cells don't function well, it also impacts our mood. For example, if we do emotionally challenging tasks, one of the things that happens is the release of this growth factor called brain-derived neurotrophic factor. It strengthens the connections in our cells and increases the number of good cells.

That’s one way we’re improving the networks in our brain. This translates not only into making better decisions and fostering creativity but also into improving our mood. One of the beautiful things about good stress—these hormetic stressors—is this phenomenon of cross-adaptation.

We can use any one of the stressors to build resilience in a cross-adaptive way. For example, using physical stress to build emotional resilience can lead to a brighter mood, greater creativity, and vice versa. That’s really key because sometimes people feel stuck, thinking the only way to manage stress is through meditation or mindfulness. For some people with very busy minds, that doesn’t always work.

But knowing you can, for example, do high-intensity interval training, which also ramps up brain-derived neurotrophic factor, is empowering. Intermittent fasting has a similar effect. Using these approaches can help build resilience in the brain, enhance neuroplasticity, and improve mood and stress management.

So, it really comes down to what leads to the imbalance creating your mood state and how you can get to the root of it.

Pathak: Can you talk a little bit about some of the ways that our modern systems negatively impact our ability to handle stress and maintain good health?

Bergquist: Yeah, one of the key things to differentiate is what makes stress good versus bad. Stress becomes harmful when it’s chronic and continuous—situations like contentious relationships, work challenges, financial hardship, or insecurity.

Good stress, by contrast, arises from brief, intermittent episodes. Our bodies are designed for this type of stress, which mirrors how our ancestors experienced stress in their natural environment. Over 2 million years, our ancestors faced acute, brief stressors that shaped our physiology, which now depends on these types of challenges for growth and healing.

In the last two centuries, radical cultural changes have brought us comfort, which has benefits, like refrigeration that prevents starvation and medical advancements addressing infections. But we’ve also removed many natural stressors that were once part of everyday life—plant chemicals, intervals of high-intensity exercise, and thermal stress from heat and cold.

For example, our ancestors didn’t have air conditioning or heating and had to endure periods of fasting due to food scarcity. They were continually challenged to explore new territories. As we’ve become more comfortable, we’ve eliminated these stressors, leaving us more vulnerable to mental and physical illnesses.

The concept here is bioplasticity, essentially the biological equivalent of "use it or lose it." When we experience stress stimuli, we adapt and grow. But when we remove those stimuli, we lose our ability to adapt and become vulnerable.

We need some stress, but it’s essential to differentiate between harmful stress, which depletes and exhausts us, and good stress, which energizes, empowers, and promotes health.

Pathak: You mentioned plant chemicals and their role as a type of good stress. Can you elaborate on that?
 Bergquist: Absolutely. Understanding our connection to plants has changed radically. Plants produce phytochemicals in response to environmental stressors like drought, UV light, insects, or animals eating them. These phytochemicals make plants stress-resistant.

When we consume these plants, their phytochemicals activate our stress responses. For example, sulforaphane, found in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables, activates a master regulator called NRF2, which ramps up our antioxidant defenses and helps metabolize environmental toxins.

Similarly, resveratrol, found in grapes, pistachios, and dark chocolate, activates sirtuins, which improve mitochondrial function and energy production. By consuming plants stressed by their environment, we build our defenses against stress.

Yet in America, only 1 in 10 people meets the recommended intake of fruits and vegetables. In my book, I discuss 10 phytochemicals that activate healing stress responses and list foods that contain them. A simple takeaway: eat more fruits, vegetables, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, and spices to leverage the power of food.

Pathak: Since we’re discussing food, let’s move on to intermittent fasting. How does it serve as a good stressor, and what’s your advice for incorporating it?
 Bergquist: Intermittent fasting can take many forms. What I advocate for is circadian fasting—eating within a 12-hour window or less and fasting for 12 or more hours. This approach aligns with our circadian biology, which is designed to digest food earlier in the day and wind down in the evening.

Currently, most people eat over a 15-hour period, with 45% of their calories consumed at dinner or later. This disrupts our body’s natural processes. At night, insulin levels are lower, making it harder to metabolize food. Spikes in glucose and insulin prevent the overnight activation of repair mechanisms.

Fasting for 12 or more hours allows our bodies to perform maintenance and repair, such as DNA repair and removing damaged components from cells. Without this, we accumulate damage and fall out of balance.

Pathak: Let’s talk about movement. You mentioned high-intensity exercise as a good stressor. Can you elaborate?
 

Bergquist: Ancestrally, periods of vigorous activity were part of life, whether escaping predators or hunting. These intervals of intensity provide unique benefits not gained from moderate exercise.

High-intensity activity depletes energy rapidly, signaling the body to create more efficient energy systems. It improves mitochondrial health, a key factor in addressing metabolic diseases.

Compared to steady-state exercise, interval training—alternating fast and slow paces—builds greater aerobic fitness. It gives the body the extra stimulus needed to maximize health benefits.

Pathak: Practically speaking, how can people incorporate bursts of high-intensity activity into daily life?

 

Bergquist: It’s simple. For example, run up a flight of stairs instead of walking. When getting your car from a parking deck, move quickly. Small, intentional bursts of activity can provide these benefits.

Pathak: Moving on to exposure to temperature—hot and cold—there’s been a lot of media attention. What are the benefits of short-term exposures?

 Bergquist: Exposure to temperature changes isn’t just for biohackers; it’s something everyone can incorporate. It doesn’t have to be extreme or expensive.

For cold, a 30-second cold shower suffices. For heat, a 102–104°F bath works. Temperature changes stress the body, activating repair mechanisms like DNA repair and reducing inflammation.

Even small adjustments, like setting the thermostat to 60°F for a few hours daily, can increase metabolism and promote health.

Pathak: This all ties into the idea of balance. How do you approach these practices as a lifestyle rather than as a “hack”?

Bergquist: Yeah. So getting at the right dose—this kind of Goldilocks dose that we're talking about—the hormetic zone that activates our healing responses but doesn't become chronic stress, right? Even a good stress can become harmful if it's too much. The way you can feel your way to this zone is by pushing just a little bit past your comfort zone, but not to the point where you feel unsafe or overwhelmed.

And that is going to be different for every person, right? So in the book, I have protocols that create a framework so that every person can individualize these stressors in their life. And it's going to be not only different person to person, but within the same person, it’s going to be different day to day, depending on our recovery.

So that’s kind of an overarching idea: just past your comfort zone. You just have to be willing to get uncomfortable. This is inescapable—it's an inescapable part of the growth that I think we all seek and that we all have this ability to ramp up our human potential to live better lives if we just push past that comfort zone.

Pathak: So let's say we've followed these protocols. We're pushing past our comfort zone. Talk to us a little bit about recovery. Then, what should we be thinking about with regard to allowing ourselves to be in this recovery zone as well?

Bergquist: Yeah, and I’m so glad you asked that because the key is not just to stress—you don’t get all the benefits if you don’t have adequate recovery. It’s during the stress that our bodies activate these healing defenses; we become more efficient, we ramp up our repair processes. But it’s in the recovery that we reconfigure our bodies to get to that healthier state.

Stress without recovery can accumulate and become chronic stress. So think of it like yin and yang, like peanut butter and jelly. They have to go hand in hand. And the recovery is going to be different depending on the type of stress. I go through this in great detail in the protocol. For example, if the stress is intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating, the recovery is going to be nutrient-dense meals with adequate protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals.

If the stress is, for example, a really mentally taxing thing that you were working on, the recovery is going to involve doing things like deep rest—which is different than zoning out and watching TV. You don’t want a busy mind; you want to give your body the best chance of building neuroplasticity. So you either want to be out in nature or engage in these forms of deep rest.

It depends on the stress, but the point that you bring up, which is so important, is that it’s mild to moderate stress for a short duration, followed by recovery. Stress, recovery, repeat. Stress, recovery, repeat. That is the blueprint for us becoming our strongest, healthiest, and happiest selves.

Pathak: So, talk to the listener who’s really intrigued by what you’ve taught us today and wants to get started incorporating this into their day-to-day life but maybe feels a little overwhelmed.

Where should they start? And how do you envision someone incorporating good stress into their routines?

Bergquist: Yeah. I think the idea of adding stress to our lives right now just seems so counterintuitive that it’s natural to have some level of resistance or skepticism about it. But I think the thing that anybody struggling with stress should know is that we were made for stress. It’s just that the type of stress we’re exposed to is the kind we weren’t designed for, and that’s why it’s leading to harm.

So we don’t have to fear stress, and we certainly don’t have to stress about being stressed. I think that’s the key—it’s a mindset shift. I want everyone to really start thinking about this as a mindset. So much of what we’re told is what to avoid: our environment is harming us, we have to get rid of processed food, we have to stop being sedentary. It’s all about avoidance and fear and these pollutants and toxins.

And yes, there’s merit to that, but I want people to switch toward a mindset of abundance and growth. The path to get to that is through stress.

Pathak: Can you talk to us a little bit more about how, from a cellular level to the level of our physiology, these good stressors change and shift our body, and the benefits these changes provide?

Bergquist: One way to think about what we’re doing with good stress is to think of our body and our cells as a savings account. When we’re exposed to all these environmental harms that are happening every day, damaging our proteins and DNA, what we’re doing is making withdrawals out of our health savings account.

When we choose good stress—these forms of hormetic stress that are brief and intermittent—what we’re doing is making deposits into that account. What we want to do is build our account, right? We want to build resilience, and that’s ultimately the goal—so that we can prevent disease and slow the aging process.

Pathak: So beautifully said. I’ve been talking about this with a lot of people in my community, where we really want to build this bank for a time when, in the future, we might have to contend with an illness or a big stressor. The more we have in our bank—I love your analogy—the better able we’ll be to manage any kind of future stressor.

Bergquist: Right. And that’s what resilience is. Resilience is building your defenses. It’s using stress to fortify your body in a way that, down the road, if you get an unexpected illness, your ability to fight it is greater. For example, we know that if we use mental stress to build our cognitive reserve, our risk of dementia is lower by about 45%.

So yes, we need to make these small investments throughout our lives. Good stress is one of the most powerful ways to do it, and that builds our resilience because there’s so much that’s unavoidable and unpredictable in our future.

Pathak: Can you say your mantra one more time so that we can take that home with us? Then I’d like to give you just the final few minutes of our time together for a few more practical tips or strategies you might want to share with our audience.

Bergquist: The mantra is: stress, recover, repeat. Stress, recover, repeat.

What we know from the science of good stress, from hormesis, is that every time you expose yourself to one stressor and then give yourself time to recover, there’s a ceiling effect of how much it can increase your human potential. And it’s about 20 to 25%.

Going for really intense, big doses of stress isn’t going to make you stronger—it just teeters into chronic stress. But when we do this repeatedly—stress, recover, repeat—over time, we can increase our human potential by 60 to 90%. Think about that: we can almost double our human potential.

That’s why this is so powerful. That’s why we need a mindset of growth, empowerment, activating our innate ability to fight disease, age better, live a better life, and live a life with more joy.

Pathak: Today, we discussed the stress paradox. We learned that, while long-term, unrelenting pressures can harm our bodies and minds, short bursts of the right kind of stress can be a powerful tool for building health. It’s all about finding those small, controlled ways to push just a little bit beyond our comfort zone—whether it’s a quick interval workout, giving our guts the chance to rest with an overnight fast, or turning the shower dial briefly to cold.

The key is to pair any good stressor with intentional recovery, so we give ourselves a chance to feel distress and then a chance to repair and adapt. Rather than fearing stress, we can embrace the body’s natural resilience, tapping into a new mantra that I’m really interested in repeating over and over: stress, recover, repeat—for better energy, stronger defenses, and a brighter mindset.

So don’t be afraid to step a bit outside your comfort zone. To find out more information about Dr. Bergquist, visit DrSharonBergquist.com. We’ll have that information in our show notes.

Thank you so much for listening. Please take a moment to follow, rate, and review this podcast on your favorite listening platform. If you’d like to send me an email about topics you’re interested in or questions for future guests, please send me a note at [email protected]. This is Dr. Neha Pathak for the WebMD Health Discovered podcast.