Common Stress Relievers Can Age You Faster. Do This Instead.

After a stressful day, it’s tempting to crash on the couch, switch on the TV, and scroll through your phone until bedtime. It feels like stress relief because it’s mindless, but that’s exactly why it doesn’t work.

Stress is a top factor impacting mental health, according to a 2026 American Psychiatric Association poll of 2,201 adults. Nearly half of respondents said they feel more anxious now than a year ago, up from 43% in 2025.¹

Our bodies were built to handle short bursts of pressure. In fact, we need some stress to respond to challenges, grow, and adapt. But chronic, unmanaged stress speeds up aging in multiple systems in the body the way stop-and-go traffic ages the engine and brakes on a car. A single season of stress can advance your biological age — how well your cells, organs, and systems are actually functioning — by years.

Chronic stress drives the low-grade inflammation linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cognitive decline. It shortens telomeres (the protective caps on chromosomes), impairs the mitochondria that power cells, and turns damaged cells into inflammatory “zombie” cells. Chronic stress may even alter how your body reads genes involved in repair. “Stress literally reprograms your DNA,” says Lanna Cheuck, D.O., a board-certified urologic surgeon and global longevity expert.

Stress isn’t going anywhere, so what matters is finding ways to recover effectively. “That’s what your body needs to take on a healthy amount of stress and stay protected from cellular damage,” says Michelle Larivee, founder and CEO of WTHN, a holistic wellness studio in New York City.

About the Experts

• Saad Alam is co-founder and CEO of Hone Health.
• Lanna Cheuck, D.O., is a board-certified urologic surgeon and global longevity expert.
• Dan Churchill is a performance chef, hybrid athlete, and author of Eat Like a Legend.
• Michelle Larivee is founder and CEO of WTHN, a holistic wellness studio in New York City.

Unwinding Isn’t the Same as Recovering

The average American spends nearly 3.7 hours a day watching TV and another 2 hours scrolling social media — roughly 6 hours of what most people would call “unwinding.”^{2 3} But this kind of passive rest doesn’t actually relieve stress, and it often makes things worse.

A 2025 study in BMC Public Health found that greater binge-watching frequency was associated with higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress.⁴ An analysis of 141 studies found the same consequences for passive social media use.⁵ And when scrolling tips into doomscrolling, anxiety compounds — the more you scroll to soothe discomfort, the worse you feel.⁶

What Does Work to Relieve Stress

True stress relief and recovery actively shift your nervous system out of fight-or-flight mode and back into a relaxed state that supports digestion, sleep, immune balance, and cellular repair. 

The best recovery tools are ones that reliably change your physical or mental state and that you can build into your regular routine. “The goal isn’t to have 15 different things in your stack — that’s way too much,” says Saad Alam, Hone Health co-founder and CEO. “The trick is to try enough things to find the three you’ll do consistently, and be willing to change your protocol based on the season of your life.”

These recovery tools are all backed by scientific evidence.

Exercise

Exercise temporarily activates the body’s stress response, but regular physical activity can lower cortisol, boost mood, improve stress resilience, and reduce perceived stress over time.^{7 8} Cardio, strength training, yoga, Qi gong, and tai chi can all help, but consistency trumps any specific workout. “You can’t brush your teeth once a month and expect results,” says Larivee. “It’s the same with exercise.”

Sleep

Sleep resets cortisol, regulates hormones, and gives the brain and body time to repair.^{9 10 11} Yet about 1 in 3 U.S. adults gets fewer than seven hours a night.¹² Aim for 7–9 hours in a cool, dark room, keep sleep and wake times consistent, and get sunlight first thing in the morning. to reinforce your natural sleep-wake cycle.¹³ 

Diet

No food can switch off stress, but a Mediterranean-style diet built around whole foods, protein, fiber, leafy greens, and omega-3-rich fish, can lower stress-induced inflammation.¹⁴ How you eat matters, too. “Try to make it a moment in your day when you can really relax,” says performance chef Dan Churchill. “Getting away from your desk gives your body a chance to shift into the parasympathetic ‘rest-and-digest’ state.”

Blood work

When stress accelerates biological aging by disrupting reproductive hormones, inflammation, blood sugar, and cardiovascular risk, comprehensive bloodwork can detect those changes — or uncover other reasons for symptoms like fatigue, poor sleep, or low mood. Reviewing the results with a physician and tracking them over time can show whether your overall health is moving in the right direction. 

Meditation

Meditation and breathwork directly interrupt the body’s stress response, lowering cortisol and inflammation and easing anxiety and depression.¹⁵ Slow breathing activates the vagus nerve, which can produce a calming effect within minutes and improve nervous-system regulation over time.¹⁶ “I’ve been meditating twice a day for 15 years,” Alam says. “It’s the single best thing I’ve done for myself.”

Acupuncture

Acupuncture may help shift the nervous system out of fight-or-flight mode, while cupping can improve circulation and ease muscle tension.^{17 18} After starting regular acupuncture to ease chronic pain, Larivee says, “I was sleeping better, I was less stressed, and I was getting sick less often.”

Social connection

Loneliness hikes cortisol and inflammation, harming your health as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.¹⁹ On the flip side, social ties have been linked to longevity. In an analysis of 148 studies, people with stronger relationships had a 50% greater likelihood of survival over time than people with weaker social ties.²⁰ 

With a new baby at home, Alam is appreciating the restorative power of quality time with family. “The moment you’re in may give you more happiness and support your longevity journey more than you realize,” he says.

That’s a surprising lesson coming from the CEO of a health optimization company. “It’s not always about speeding up, doing more, or optimizing harder,” Alam says. “Sometimes it’s slowing down long enough to let the body repair.”

About the author

Aviva, Hone's Executive Editor, is an award-winning health-science journalist and former executive editor of Psychology Today, Reader's Digest, and The Healthy. She has written for national print and digital publications including Health, Prevention, Women’s Health, Men’s Health, Shape, Fitness, SELF, New York Magazine, and more.