Allostatic load is the accumulated wear on your body from sustained stress.
Your body is built to adapt. When pressure arrives, it compensates — adjusting hormones, cardiovascular output, immune function. This adaptive capacity is allostasis.
Allostatic load is the price the body pays for all that adapting.
Small costs accumulate across months and years. The strain shows up quietly: slow recovery, poor sleep, getting sick easily, hitting empty faster than you used to.
Chronic stress is the pattern; allostatic load is the bill it leaves.
Not one bad day. All the days combined.
Signs:
slow recovery,
poor sleep,
low resilience,
getting sick easily.
The body was adapting quietly. Now it is tired of adapting. The bill doesn’t clear as quickly as the pattern changes — recovery takes longer than the stress did.