Elissa Epel

At a glance

• Elissa Epel is an American health psychologist and professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where she directs the Aging, Metabolism, and Emotion Center.
• She studies how chronic stress affects the body: hormones, metabolism, eating behaviour and biological ageing.
• A well-known study (PNAS, 2004) of mothers caring for a chronically ill child found that those reporting more stress had shorter telomeres, the protective ends of chromosomes.
• With Nobel laureate Elizabeth Blackburn she wrote The Telomere Effect (2017), followed by The Stress Prescription (2022), with short daily practices.
• She also studies mindfulness, sleep and ‘good’ stress, such as brief physical challenges the body recovers from.
• For longevity, her work shows that mental strain leaves measurable biological traces, and that recovery matters as much as the stress itself.
• Takeaway: deliberately plan moments of recovery into your day, such as a walk, a breathing exercise or a good night’s sleep.