· Guide · 2 min read
Welcome to Onix: Dr. Elissa Epel
Stanford and Yale trained health psychologist and UCSF professor, one of the world's foremost researchers on how stress ages us at the cellular level, and what we can do to slow it down.
We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Elissa Epel to Onix.
Dr. Elissa Epel is a Stanford and Yale-trained health psychologist, professor at UCSF, and one of the world’s foremost researchers on how stress ages us at the cellular level, and what we can do to slow it down.
That question has anchored her entire career. She completed her PhD in clinical and health psychology at Yale, returned to UCSF for a postdoctoral fellowship, and has spent over two decades as a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences building one of the most respected research programs on stress biology and longevity in the world. She is Director of the Aging, Metabolism, and Emotions Center at UCSF, a member of the National Academy of Medicine, past President of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, and Co-Chair of the Mind & Life Steering Council, and has been named among the top 0.1% of most cited researchers globally. Her landmark collaboration with Nobel Laureate Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn revealed how chronic stress shortens telomeres, the protective caps on our DNA, accelerating cellular aging. Together they co-authored The Telomere Effect, a New York Times bestseller translated into 30 languages. Her second book, The Stress Prescription, offers science-based tools to reduce stress and has been published in 17 languages. She also studies how contemplative social and stress resilience strategies can help people face existential stress, such as climate and political distress.
We tend to think of aging as something that just happens to us over time. But the science shows clearly that how we respond to stress, what we eat, how we sleep, how connected we feel, all of this is actively shaping our cells’ health and rate of aging right now, in real time. Onix lets me bring that understanding to people in a way that’s personal and actionable, not just informational.
— Dr. Elissa Epel
What Her Guide Does on Onix
Help people understand the biology of stress and aging at the cellular level, with science-backed guidance on telomere health, stress resilience, sleep, metabolism, and the daily habits that determine how fast or slow we age, drawing on decades of research at the frontier of longevity science. We can experience enhanced stress resilience, and deep rest states, that rejuvenate and restore our cellular health.
