What is Allostatic Load?
Sometimes a collection of stressful events can push us over the edge mentally. Behavioral Psychology tells us why.
Good Afternoon.
If you’ve kept up with the events in the news these past couple of weeks, you know that there’s been a lot of controversy around the United States Supreme Court. These include their overturning Roe v. Wade and effectively endangering swaths of women across the country, making sweeping adjustments to the federal government’s ability to affect climate change, and removing a New York Law that bars access to concealed carry for guns.
Even for a non-newsy person, this is all a lot to keep up with. It is nearly impossible to think of what kind of near-term ramifications these changes will have without finding yourself buried in stress. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, I wrote about how to not over-consume the news in an attempt to help alleviate some of the stress that event caused, but the latest crises in domestic politics have only made it harder to stay detached from media.
So, then, what does this mean for our personal health? At the crux of all these issues is personal freedom (or a lack thereof). Depending on your demographic, you might be feeling the effects of this policy whiplash harder than others. Even if you haven’t directly been affected by it yet, reading stories about people like you who are suffering or who have been disadvantaged can disrupt your normal stress balance.
Enter Allostatic Load.
How Allostatic Load Determines Your Health
Allostatic load is a term in the field of psychophysiological studies (I’m sorry you had to read that word) that determines the cost of chronic stress on your mental and physical health. Think of your body as an iPhone battery. There are certain activities that will drain that battery faster than others (strenuous exercise, working 12 hours days, to name a few). Allostatic Load is the measure of each “app,” or event’s effect, on our bodily battery.
Let’s take two hypothetical subjects and compare them for a practical example. John M. is 30, works at a bank, he’s single, he has about $60,000 in student loan debt left over, and his mom just got diagnosed with cancer. Jane Q. is 43, has three children, just got laid off from her job, and has Crohn’s disease. Who has the higher allostatic load?
From the few variables I listed, Jane would likely score higher. If our grading system was 1-10, with 10 being extremely chronically stressed to the point of physical detriment, John’s allostatic load score would be about a 5.5, and Jane’s would be at least an 8. The amount of day-to-day tasks she’s dealing with pin her down with more stress in her situation than John; searching for a new job, managing her immediate physical condition, and tending to her kids are all wreaking havoc on her stress management system. Jane would be the equivalent of an iPhone with too many apps open at once.
What are the effects of elevated allostatic load? For starters. a weakened immune system, brain fog, elevated stress hormones like cortisol, and feelings of being defeated and overwhelmed. Studies on soldiers in the military have found that chronically high allostatic load led to substance abuse, chronic joint/back pain, sleep disruption and memory loss.
Avoiding The Snowball Effect?
You might empathize with Jane (or even be Jane) and think “How does one even control stress at that point?” Unfortunately, life has a way of piling on the bad at times, and sometimes that level of stress coming all at once can undoubtedly stick around. Our immune systems, however, are arguably the most impressively adaptive they’ve ever been in human history. In a relatively short time, namely the past 30 years, humans have become accustomed to handling multiple catastrophes at a time.
That doesn’t sound like it’s something to celebrate, I know. It’s not ideal that we should have to prepare for catastrophe in our modern world or even expect it. But it’s important to know that our conditioning to the constant stresses that come about will actually make our immune systems and our brains more resilient. You need not think that one instance of high allostatic load will cause you to collapse in a seizure or leave you sick in bed.
If the concept of allostatic load is new to you, though, and this is your first time reading about it, let your awareness of it now be the means of managing it moving forward. While there are unavoidable stressors in life that will come up, there are methods by which you can taper down other activity and direct your energy toward fighting those stressors off.
Before we do a deep dive into the ways your stress response system works, there are a few quick fixes. First, it helps to do an “energy assessment” of your day-to-day — that is, where you expend the most energy daily. You can do this by dividing your activities into categories: Work, Family, Health, and Other Activities. If the stress in one sector of your daily life skews toward the higher-stress side, you would reduce (or potentially increase) your engagement in some of the other sectors to balance out your energy.
Think of it like an investment portfolio — as an example, let’s say your family life has become more stressful to deal with. You would rebalance your energy portfolio, moving some assets (energy) from work and other activities to strengthen your investment in your family.
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Identifying Types of Allostatic Load
Okay, now for the deep dive. Just in case you’re curious about what the stress response looks like when someone is reacting to a particularly taxing event, the graph above gives us an idea of what a normal response to stress looks like. Identifying your allostatic load requires a level of distinct level of intuition about your physical, mental and emotional states.
In the figure above, the upper-most image represents exposure to stress, and the nervous system/fight-or-flight response and its subsequent cooldown. Stress should peak at a certain point (think high heart rate during a workout, maximum fear during a scary movie) and gradually decline after exposure.
Mismanagement of allostatic load can look like any of the four graphs beneath the top graph. It’s important to recognize when the load is tipping becoming unmanageably high with these patterns. In the middle graphs, there are two examples of high allostatic load, with one being unsustainable and the other being sustained.
On the left is a repeated exposure to stress, with no sign of adequate recovery after each stressor. The “hits” that cause high physiological response constantly will effectively weaken the immune system because the stress isn’t adaptable. Think of the soldiers in the military mentioned earlier. One day, they witness a gruesome death on the battlefield. The next, they realize half of their battalion is being sent home. The following days they start to lose sleep because they fear losing the battle. This is a high level of allostatic load because of the sheer unpredictability of the stress.
On the right, the red dots next to the blue show an image of a healthier stress response. The body and mind will adapt better to predictable stress, and the physiological response will be smaller and smaller each time it is exposed. That red graph might be representative of a neurosurgeon working in the OR — someone who regularly deals with stressful surgeries, but has been doing it for years and can effectively recovery from the peaks of stress.
The bottom two graphs are also interconnected, and detail the positive relationship we should have with stress. A prolonged response is much like the repeated hits. Clearly, it isn’t good for there to be a constant exposure to high allostatic load with no recovery. Think of a lawyer who pulls multiple sleepless nights working on a case, showing up to the courthouse each day, needing 2-3 coffees to get through the day. If they aren’t seeing their family, sleeping, or doing anything to recover, it’s safe to assume they might get sick or suffer from short-term memory loss, at the very least.
Similarly, an inadequate response resulting in low allostatic load (bottom right) should be cause for response too. A practical example here is exercise exposure. If you’re not sweating, straining, or panting enough during a cardio workout, there’s a good chance you’re not doing enough during that workout to induce change. This isn’t to say every workout has to be super strenuous. But if your three-days-per-week gym routine doesn’t yield a single drop of sweat, it might not be doing any good for you.
Developing Awareness
In your day-to-day, try to take stock of what things cause you to exert some form of energy. If an activity feels “draining,” it might not necessarily be the activity itself that drains you, but the fact that you have to complete it along with a bunch of other tasks simultaneously. If you’re able to see how stressful certain activities are, you may be able to find better coping mechanisms to offset them.
Recovery can take many shapes and forms. It can be turning off notifications, making rules abot discussing the news, or ditching the phone for a few hours altogether. Exercise, nutrition, and sleep are all catalysts for good allostatic load management, but I’ve hammered that home enough. Sometimes the best way to manage stress is to actively change the way you perform your work or the amount of exposure you have to it.
If you feel yourself slipping into a mental state of being overwhelmed, talk to someone close to you about what their perception of your task management is. Oftentimes, we think our process for dealing with problems is the perfect one. But loved ones and friends can give us a new perspective on how to more effectively manage allostatic load, especially if we are neglecting those people.
I hope you’re able to take this information with you into the coming weeks.
Happy Sunday!