Essentials: Manage Stress & Build Resilience | Dr. Elissa Epel
In this episode, Andrew Huberman sits down with Dr. Elissa Epel, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF, to explore how acute and chronic stress influence cellular aging, telomeres, and mitochondrial function. They discuss actionable mental and physical interventions to interrupt rumination, how reframing threat into a challenge response alters cardiovascular dynamics, and how radical acceptance and tolerating uncertainty protect long-term physical and emotional health.
- Dr. Elissa Epel explains that internal rumination causes far more sustained stress than actual physical danger: "Our thoughts are the most common form of stress." Read →
- Chronic psychological stress consumes systemic ATP by keeping the body locked in perpetual vigilance, depressing mitochondrial enzyme activity to levels seen in inherited mitochondrial disorders. Read →
- Chronic stress from attempting to solve unfixable problems accelerates cellular aging, shortening telomeres and impairing mitochondrial function. Read →
- Dr. Elissa Epel's research at UCSF shows that blood pressure climbs equally during stress whether you feel threatened or challenged, but the underlying hemodynamics are completely different. Read →
- Dr. Elissa Epel, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF, identifies tolerance for uncertainty as a rare resilience trait that curbs anxiety and depression while accelerating stress recovery. Read →