Skip to main content

Stress Tolerance

Meaning

Stress Tolerance is the physiological and psychological capacity of an individual to withstand, adapt to, and rapidly recover from significant physical, emotional, or cognitive demands without experiencing a detrimental decline in performance or systemic health. This capacity is fundamentally governed by the resilience of the neuroendocrine system, particularly the robust and balanced function of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal, or HPA, axis. High tolerance correlates with enhanced allostatic load capacity, allowing the individual to maintain homeostasis despite chronic or acute challenges. Clinical efforts focus on enhancing this tolerance to mitigate the long-term, damaging effects of unmanaged stress on cardiovascular and metabolic health.