Twenty-five years have passed since I first described a syndrome in my book called “The Relaxation Effect.” When Rest Is Dangerous to Your Health (2001). At that time, the relationship between stress and illness was well established. What wasn’t discussed was the relationship between rest and disease, and the Explanation Effect wasn’t even a Google searchable term. Today, however, this idea resonates with many people who recognize a familiar pattern in their lives: they feel sick, tired, or emotionally drained. stressful periods, but immediately after the pressure rises and they begin to relax.
Through clinical practice, teaching, research discussions, and thousands of interactions with students and patients over the past two decades, I have come to understand how common this pattern is. What began as an observation about post-traumatic stress disorder over weekends and holidays now appears to be associated with a wide range of health and performance issues.
What is the explanation effect?
The arousal effect (LDE) is a period of sustained activation—regardless of positive arousal or negative arousal—with a sharp decrease in physiological arousal. A useful analogy is a car traveling at high speed that suddenly slams on the brakes. The body has difficulty adapting to change instantly.
During prolonged stress, the body mobilizes energy hormones such as cortisol and other adrenal stress chemicals. These substances help the body cope with urgent demands by increasing alertness, increasing (increased) immune activity and suppressing certain inflammatory reactions. When a stressful period suddenly ends and the body goes to rest, the immune soldiers go offline, or technically “turned down.” For some of the population, this transition creates vulnerability iillness, fatigue, pain and emotional symptoms. Ironically, the moment we expect to feel relief can sometimes be the moment our body struggles the most.
Retirement: Risk of Great Depression
One of the most important life transitions related to the insight effect pension. While retirement is often seen as a reward after decades of hard work, it can also mean a sudden loss of structure, purpose, and daily activity. In some people, this transition leads to heart disease, strokes, chronic fatigue and depression. Understanding this pattern, I have spent years helping executives and professionals prepare psychologically and physiologically for retirement. before it happens.
Retiring without preparation can inadvertently set the stage for a strong response. Having a plan—maintaining purpose, routines, and meaningful activities—can significantly reduce risk.
Lowering performance in athletics
The explanation effect is also evident in sports. While working with UCLA athletic I have often observed in teams that athletes or teams that have had a highly emotional victory often struggle in their next performance. After the intense focus and adrenaline rush of a big win, the body and mind can go into post-activation slumps, causing lethargy. concentrationand decreased intensity. Fans sometimes interpret this as an absence motivationbut from a physiological point of view it may represent a classical response.
Migraine, panic attacks and immune status
Another surprising feature of the release effect is that many stress-related conditions occur after the stress subsides, not during the stress. Migraine, panic attacks and autoimmune flare-ups often occur during periods when people rest on weekends, holidays, or immediately after major periods.
Other conditions that may have flare-ups associated with frequent fall periods include:
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
- Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis
- Eczema and inflammatory skin diseases
- chronic fatigue and diffuse pain conditions
In my early years teaching in UCLA’s Department of Gastroenterology, I noticed how often IBS symptoms worsened after periods of stress reduction rather than stress itself. Many patients report becoming symptomatic on weekends, vacations, or immediately after performing strenuous tasks.
The role of the survival instinct
In my book Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You (2014)how do i describe fear and anger can keep the body in overactive state. When the survival instinct is triggered repeatedly, the resistance to stress decreases. The body begins to react strongly even to relatively small difficulties. As this increased reactivity progresses, a cycle of intense activation followed by a sharp decline is common.
Over time, this pattern can contribute to and decrease in recurrent episodes of inflammation endurance. As chronic inflammation is now widely recognized as a contributor to aging and disease, poorly managed shedding cycles may also play a role in long-term health decline.
A different approach: Discomfort training
The solution isn’t to eliminate stress altogether—that’s an impossible goal—to change how the brain interprets pressure and discomfort.
Many people automatically interpret discomfort as danger. When this happens, the survival instinct is unnecessarily activated and causes the organism to go into high physiological arousal.
I refer to the process of re-drafting this answer uncomfortable exercises.
Discomfort training helps people experience pressure, difficulty, and physical discomfort without triggering a full-blown survival response. As the brain begins to interpret these emotions as manageable rather than threatening, activation levels stabilize, making depression less likely.
Resetting the stress response
The encouraging news is that the brain and body are remarkably flexible. With proper education, people can learn to tolerate stress more calmly and recover from it more easily.
Instead of dramatic spikes and bumps, nervous system starts to work more smoothly. The body works “cooler”, recovery is improved and episodes of depression can be significantly reduced. When this happens, the cycle of overactivation and subsequent debilitating depression can be interrupted.
Rewiring the brain in this way is not always complicated and can often be learned relatively quickly. But its effects can be profound – improving not only health and emotional stability, but also performance, longevity and quality of life.
The bottom line
The explanation effect may actually reveal a hidden rule of human biology: We do not break under stress; when we don’t have to hold it together, we fall apart. The body evolved to prioritize survival over healing. Sometimes the key to avoiding illness after stress is not just learning to relax, but learning how to manage the discomfort without triggering the fear response of the survival instinct.
