Allostatic Load: Why Your Body Struggles with Stress Even After Rest

Available YouTube: zde

Length: 5 minutes

Language: English (easy to understand for intermediate learners)

Why watch this if you’re feeling overwhelmed?

  • Burnout isn’t just about being tired — your body’s entire baseline can shift.
  • This video explains why it’s common to come back from vacation and still feel completely drained.
  • It helps you see that it’s not about being weak — it’s a biological response to long-term stress without proper recovery.
  • A great introduction to the concept of physiological overload that brings both clarity and the courage to seek systemic change.

Key terms

  • Homeostasis: your body’s stable internal balance (e.g., heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature)
  • Allostasis: your body’s ability to adapt to stress temporarily
  • Allostatic load: what happens when your body doesn’t return to calm — and the “new normal” becomes tense and stressed

My note

This video fits perfectly with how I describe overload myself: as a loss of rhythm and a shift in the body’s internal state. Many people feel tired, irritable, or numb — and don’t understand why, because “they didn’t really do that much today.”

The video shows that your body can be overwhelmed just from the long-term build-up of small stressors without real recovery. For me, it was eye-opening to realize that the body isn’t “making up” that tension — it’s simply reacting to what it’s been exposed to for too long.

And if someone feels like they’re “just not functioning like they used to,” this is a great place to start understanding why — and to see that it’s not failure, but a biological response to ongoing pressure.