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TIME published a cortisol myth-busting piece on April 23 as searches for the term "cortisol" have nearly doubled since January and hit record highs for three consecutive months. The piece makes a clinically important point that most wellness content gets backwards: burnout is not associated with chronically high cortisol, it is associated with a flattened cortisol rhythm and sometimes low cortisol, a state the body reaches after prolonged stress has worn the system down. The hormone that everyone is trying to lower may already be too low by the time they notice something is wrong. Here's what people are reacting to: everything they've been told about cortisol and stress is probably backwards.
If you were to choose only three lifestyle factors that most profoundly shape how you age, they would be stress, sleep, and strength. Together, they form the biological triangle that determines your metabolic health, hormonal balance, inflammation levels, body composition, cognitive performance, and daily energy. These three factors interact so deeply that improving one nearly always improves the others. When optimized together, they can slow or even reverse many of the early signs of aging.
A study published this week out of the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology found that adults over 70 who received the shingles vaccine showed measurably slower biological aging across multiple domains, including lower chronic inflammation, slower epigenetic aging, and better composite biological age scores, compared to unvaccinated peers. The sample was nearly 4,000 people drawn from a nationally representative U.S. cohort, and the effects held even after controlling for income, education, and underlying health status. The results were most pronounced within three years of vaccination, but slower aging persisted beyond that window. Here's what people are reacting to: a routine shot your doctor has been recommending for years appears to do something that no supplement company has figured out how to bottle.