The TED talk How to make stress your friend talks about stress in a whole different way. It doesn’t say stress is positive for your health, but it says that the people’s beliefs about their stress really causes the health problems. Chronical stress remains a condition one should avoid, but acute stress moments don’t necessarily have a bad influence on us.
So what are the reasons for this new way of thinking? First of all, a research on people in a stressful interview showed some significant differences in the body’s reaction to stress. One group just had to answer some questions to people who were giving non-verbal disapproving reactions, the other group had to do the same, but were first told that stress is just a way of making sure the body rises to the challenge, a faster heart beat resulting in more alertness and energy and a faster breadth for more oxygen support to the body. The last group had a lower heart beat and a better physical reaction to stress and seemed to be a lot more confident when performing. A second reason of this thinking is the fact that people believing acute stress is not bad didn’t show blood vessel constraints in times of a higher blood pressure which corresponds to the state you are in in times of courage and enthusiasm. A last reason is the presence of oxytocin or the so-called “cuddle” hormone in times of stress. This hormone increases social interactions and care for other people.
We believe the stress monitoring tool can show people they have chronical stress which is really serious and has to be avoided or dealt with, but it can also be a guidance for supervisors to tell people having a lot of times of acute stress that this is not so negative, resulting in more confidence, social interaction and a better health state of the company’s employees.
So are you convinced? Can stress also be positive? And can the stress monitoring device be a help herein?
Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend?language=en#t-478221
Stress Monitoring 
If the results of this test are true then I guess stress can in indeed be positive. But I’ve always thought of stress having something positive, not that I’m fond of it but I guess we’ve all been in a situation where stress just made us perform better. For atlethes for example I can imagine it’s a great source of ‘energy’, if you ask them how they feel before a big competition they’ll usually tell you they’re a bit stressed but I guess that keeps them sharp and makes them perform even better!
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If you put it like that, stress can be positive. It can help us indeed in some situations to perform better but mostly stress still has a negative feel to it. So maybe the stress monitoring device can help to bring the negative to positive. But instead of showing people they have chronical stress, can’t the device try to prevent this?
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Yes it can, the device can alert the user when exceeding a certain percentage of stress, whereafter this person can for example take a break to prevent it.
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Personally I’m not convinced. Where can you draw the line? It’s like stating one glass of wine a day is healthy but if you drink everyday you have an alcohol problem. The grey zone between the good and bad part is too big.
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