Member-only story
The Nuance
Is the Pandemic Making Us Age More Quickly?
‘The chronic stressors that impact our body the most are both unpredictable and uncontrollable. And the pandemic is both.’
Among the many customs and precedents upended by the Trump presidency, one of the least important (but fun) was the publication of before-and-after photos showing how the Oval Office had aged its occupant.
Trump’s makeup and hair-dying habits made such comparisons impossible. But Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton all looked noticeably older — and, in particular, grayer — by the end of their terms. Side-by-side photos of these presidents are often held up as proof that stress takes a visible toll.
But does stress really age a person more quickly? It’s a question that a lot of people have pondered during the pandemic. And experts say that yes, both inside and out, the body is weathered by heavy stress.
“Stress-sensitive hormones like cortisol perform a number of functions that are essential for life, and for normal maintenance and repair, which it does when stress levels are low,” says Darlene Kertes, PhD, an associate professor of developmental psychology and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Florida. These functions include helping to control blood pressure, immune functioning, inflammation, metabolism, and much else. “But when we are faced with major life stress, cortisol’s functions shift away from those maintenance roles and towards other functions that help us meet the challenge,” she explains.
This shift isn’t a problem when stress is brief and sporadic; the body is designed to handle these sorts of challenges, Kertes says. But when a person’s stress levels remain high for weeks or months, or even years, this not only impedes the body’s typical maintenance-and-repair functions, but it also causes unhelpful adaptations that typically occur as a body grows old and breaks down.
