A SHORTCUT TOSTRESS RELIEF

“ The body has an inducible state of quietude, which allows it to repair damage done by the fight-or-flight response”

Although it’s common knowledge now, as recently as the 1960s, it was heresy for a doctor to suggest that stress and disease were linked. In fact, nobody even linked diseases like hypertension to stress, even though the word “tension”is right there in the diagnosis.

Doctors knew that patients tended to run higher blood pressures when they visited the doctor’s office—they called it“white coat hypertension.” But somehow, nobody thought through the implications of the fact that visiting the doctor can be anxiety-provoking, and such stress resulted in a blood pressure elevation that dropped once the patients went back home and relaxed.

Curious about whether there could be a link between stress and high blood pressure, Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson started discussing it with his colleagues, who mostly thought he was crazy for even suggesting it.

But Benson was dogged in his pursuit of the