'The Upside of Stress:' How stress can actually be healthy

The physical symptoms of stress have been well-documented. Stress can ruin your sleep, trigger a heart attack and even fray your DNA.

But now one health psychologist is offering a radically different point of view. Stress, says Kelly McGonigal, can actually be healthy — if handled correctly.

"It's not that the research that stress is harmful is all wrong," McGonigal told the Washington Post. "But it really needs to be put in context."

McGonigal's new book "The Upside of Stress: Why Stress is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It," argues that it is our relationship to stress that can cause health problems, not the stress itself. Essentially, feeling that stress is toxic is what's toxic.

And that can be changed. According to McGonigal, studies show that a more positive reaction to stress can produce equally positive results for health. "This research started coming out saying that if people embraced stress ... actually, you could reduce what we think of as the typical harms of stress."

She didn't always think this way. "I viewed stress as the enemy," she said. "I had been taught that it was a toxic state — as soon as you feel stress, it's a sign that our body is betraying us."

Now, however, she argues that it's the mindset and secondary responses that can do the most damage. "What seems to beget more harm is trying to avoid or suppress stress," McGonigal said. People often turn to alcohol, comfort foods or binge-watching TV as a way to reduce stress, she said, when really those actions can be more harmful than the original feeling.

Meanwhile, appropriately-handled stress can actually be healthy. "There's evidence that people who have experienced some adversity or suffering are healthier or happier ... when you take a lifetime perspective," she said. "There are ways that stress can be beneficial even when that stress is also distressing."

McGonigal joined MPR News' Tom Crann to talk about her new book, and about how people can shift their reactions to stress.