Brea Perry

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, a hassler can be anyone, really.

It can be a roommate, a coworker, a family member, as you said.

But we define it as someone who hassles, causes problems, or makes life difficult.

And we find that they're pretty ubiquitous.

About a third of people have a hassler in their close inner circle.

100%.

I mean, probably all of those things.

But we measure something called epigenetic clocks.

And this is a measure of essentially how fast your cells are aging.

And what's really interesting about biological aging is that it doesn't necessarily match up with your chronological age.

So you can be older biologically than you are chronologically.

And then we find that people who have this sort of accelerated biological aging, that has downstream consequences for how many chronic diseases you have and even early mortality.

So you can die faster if you have faster biological aging.

Yeah, that's a really great question.

So we think it has to do with chronic stress.

So if you think about the stress response, it can be really adaptive.

It can be good for you.

So like, for example, if you're in nature and you see a bear or something,