The Evo-Stress Blog

Intersectionality isn’t just about acknowledging differences—it’s a crucial component in understanding our stress response and overall health. By incorporating intersectionality into a new model of stress, we are fostering healthier, more resilient communities, and sparking a much-needed conversation about the systemic changes required in our approach to health and well-being

Stress is more than just a personal issue. It’s an integral part of our overall health and well-being, connected to everything from our mental health to our physical wellness. But too often, we oversimplify stress, seeing it as something to merely “manage” or “cope with” through personal effort. This perspective overlooks the broader picture – the complex systems in which we live and interact that contribute significantly to our stress levels. – It’s time for a stress model of medicine.

Allostasis: Our Body’s Balancing Act

At the heart of the Evolutionary-Stress Framework is a concept known as “allostasis”. Think of allostasis as your body’s balancing act. It’s how your body maintains stability and adapts to changes and stressors. But this balancing act isn’t the same all the time; it’s dynamic, adjusting based on what’s happening both inside and outside us.

Emergent Allostasis: Stress as a Conversation

When we talk about the ’emergent property’ of allostasis, we are considering how the body’s balancing act interacts with various elements, such as our environment, our diet, our thought patterns, and our social interactions. Rather than viewing stress as a standalone entity, emergent allostasis suggests we should see stress as a conversation – a dialogue between our bodies and our environments.

Stress: A Systems-Based Model

This systemic model reframes stress as a complex, dynamic system influenced by a myriad of factors. It recognizes that stress isn’t just about individual experiences or choices, but also the structures and systems we inhabit. Our work environment, social policies, healthcare systems, and how scientific knowledge is applied all contribute to this complex conversation.

Intersectionality in Health: Beyond One-Size-Fits-All

One key advantage of this systemic approach is that it lends itself to an intersectional understanding of health. ‘Intersectionality’ emphasizes how our social identities (like race, gender, and socioeconomic status) intersect to impact our experiences. When it comes to health, it highlights how these factors can interact with biological and environmental influences to impact our well-being uniquely.

For example, a low-income, transgender person of color may encounter specific stressors and health challenges related to their socioeconomic status, gender identity, and race. An intersectional, systems-based approach to stress would recognize these influences and understand their health not just through a biological lens, but also through the lens of their broader social, economic, and cultural contexts.

A New Approach to Health

Understanding stress through a systems-based, intersectional lens encourages us to consider the complexity and diversity of human experiences. It prompts healthcare providers to incorporate these factors in their treatment plans and informs public health initiatives aimed at reducing health disparities.

The adoption of this model is not just about managing stress—it’s about creating environments that are inherently less stressful, built for specificity of resources needed beyond the normative and more conducive to overall well-being of the ecosystem which will support a greater diversity of individuals. By recognizing the power of stress’ systemic and intersectional nature, we can work towards enhancing collective resilience and fostering healthier, more equitable communities.

Let’s acknowledge and embrace that health is an ongoing conversation—one that involves all aspects of our lives, our systems, and our society.

Further Reading:

1. “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” and “Behave” by Robert M. Sapolsky: These books provide a thorough exploration of stress, its causes, and its effects on the body. Sapolsky, a neuroendocrinologist, uses humor and accessible language to explain complex concepts about the biology of stress.
2. “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk: This book delves into the impacts of trauma on the body and mind, focusing on how traumatic experiences can lead to changes in brain structure and function, and contribute to mental health conditions.
3. “The End of Stress as We Know It” by Bruce S. McEwen: In this book, the author delves into the concept of allostasis and the biology of the stress response, exploring how chronic stress can impact health and well-being.
4. “Lost Connections” by Johann Hari: The book uncovers the real causes of depression and anxiety and offers a new approach to understanding and managing these conditions, emphasizing the importance of social and environmental factors.
5. “Intersecting Inequalities: Women at the Crossroads of Public Policy” by Elizabeth R. Cole & Intersectionality and Relational Psychoanalysis: New Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Sexuality” edited by Max Belkin & Cleonie White. Both of these books provide great insight into the concept of intersectionality and its relevance in the realm of psychology and public policy.
6. “Sick of Inequality? An Introduction to the Relationship between Inequality and Health” by Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett. This book takes an in-depth look at the societal impacts on health, particularly focusing on inequality and health disparities.
7. “Allostasis revisited: A perception, variation, and risk framework” by Karen R. Word, Suzanne H. Austin, John C. Wingfield: This paper revisits the concept of allostasis, which describes how an organism maintains stability through change. It introduces a new framework to understand allostasis, emphasizing the roles of perception, variation, and risk. The authors propose that the individual’s perception of its environment plays a critical role in determining the appropriate allostatic response. They also highlight the importance of understanding individual variation in allostatic responses, and how this variation can influence an organism’s risk of adverse health outcomes. This paper emphasizes the complexity and dynamic nature of allostasis and the need to consider multiple interacting factors when studying health and disease.
8. “The energetic cost of allostasis and allostatic load” by Natalia Bobba-Alves, Robert-Paul Juster, Martin Picard: This paper outlines an energy-based model for understanding the effects of chronic stress on disease risk and mortality. The authors propose that the process of maintaining stability (allostasis) in response to stress comes with an energetic cost. When the energy required to manage stress competes with the energy needed for growth, maintenance, and repair, it can lead to a state of “allostatic load,” which can accelerate aging and increase disease risk. This model suggests that measuring systemic and cellular energy expenditure could provide a new way to quantify allostatic load and its impact on health throughout the lifespan.