The Energetic Cost of Chronic Stress with Dr. Natalia Bobba-Alves

Welcome back to the Stress Puzzle! This is the first of two episodes highlighting winners of the Stress Measurement Network's (SMN) Stress Science Paper Award. Today we'll hear from the lead author of the winning paper in the Basic Science category, Dr. Natalia Bobba-Alves. We discussed the findings and implications of their paper (particularly around hypermetabolism, chronic stress, and accelerated cellular aging), directions to move the field forward, and how exciting of a moment it is for interdisciplinary stress science. 

Dr. Natalia Bobba-Alves is a Postdoctoral Researcher working at the National Institute on Aging where she focuses on how stress signaling affects cellular energetics and aging. She received numerous awards that supported both her undergraduate and master’s degrees in Uruguay, and then was awarded a Fulbright Foreign Grant, which supported her PhD in Nutritional and Metabolic Biology at Columbia University in New York. There she worked with Dr. Martin Picard in the Mitochondrial PsychoBiology Lab to quantify the energetic cost of stress and the impact on cellular aging.

SMN Stress Science Paper Award Winner (Basic Science):

• Bobba-Alves, N., Sturm, G., Lin, J., Ware, S. A., Karan, K. R., Monzel, A. S., Bris, C., Procaccio, V., Lenaers, G., Higgins-Chen, A., Levine, M., Horvath, S., Santhanam, B. S., Kaufman, B. A., Hirano, M., Epel, E., & Picard, M. (2023). Cellular allostatic load is linked to increased energy expenditure and accelerated biological aging. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 155, 106322. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2023.106322

Topics Discussed:

• Allostasis/Allostatic load/Wear and Tear
• Chronic Stress
• Glucocorticoid signaling
• Cellular energy expenditure
• Mitochondria/mitochondrial psychobiology
• Homeostasis
• Hypermetabolism
• Social stress vs. molecular stress

Additional Research Mentioned:

• Sterling, P., & Eyer, J. (1988). Allostasis: A new paradigm to explain arousal pathology. In S. Fisher & J. Reason (Eds.), Handbook of life stress, cognition and health (pp. 629–649). John Wiley & Sons. 
• Stress Puzzle episode with Dr. Michael Marmot
• Stress Puzzle episode with Dr. Jenny Tung
• Bobba-Alves N, Juster RP, Picard M. (2022) The energetic cost of allostasis and allostatic load. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 146:105951. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2022.105951.

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The Stress Puzzle is hosted by Dr. Ryan L. Brown (https://www.ryanlinnbrown.com/) and supported by the UCSF Stress Measurement Network, an NIH/NIA funded network which aims to better understand the relationship between stress and health by improving the measurement of stress in research studies. Learn more about available resources to support stress research at: www.stressmeasurement.org.

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