Hormesis is another example of Antifragility. By taking small doses of a poison, you can develop more immunity to it, just as vaccinations use a small dose of a disease to train your body to resist its stronger form.

We see similar antifragile benefits from fasting, weight lifting, running. And we also see that depriving systems of these beneficial stressors is harmful, as is evidenced by any person who has never been hungry or never exercised.

Aging, Taleb argues, is hastened by a lack of stress. We are living longer but people are more sick. All of our comfort has been detrimental to our healthspans. We thought aging causes bone degradation, but it seems that bone degradation causes aging.