Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

this book is hi-la-ri-ous.

not only does sapolsky brilliantly explain the science in an easily digestible way, he does it with flair and humor. had to read this for a class about stress and coping, and i found myself looking forward to each assignment.

700 de pagini în care se vorbește despre stres. Nu este doar o carte de popularizare a științei, este o carte aplicată, foarte densă, în care stresul este întors pe toate părțile, explicat, analizat, dinspre cauze până la efecte. Nu se oferă decât puține soluții de a scăpa de el și de efectele sale, spre final, în rest, este un volum care trece prin toată lumea organică pentru a ne dezvălui felul în care stresul pare cel mai nociv lucru care ne duce spre îmbolnăvire și moarte. Cum scăpăm? Una dintre ei idei este că ar trebui să fim mai indiferenți față de cei și cele care ne stresează - muncă, oameni, trafic etc.

Я даже не знаю, какую ставить оценку, потому что Сапольски велик, прекрасен и мудр.

Но целых четыре переводчика издательства "Питер" просто уничтожили этот текст, и не стыдно им. И книга издается и переиздается, и никому дела нет.

Две цитаты не влезли в мой ситуативный ор в процессе чтения, не могу их опустить никак.
An organism is subjected to a painful stimulus, and you are interested in how great a stress-response will be triggered. The bioengineers had been all over that one, mapping the relationship between the intensity and duration of the stimulus and the response.
Организм подвергается болезненному раздражителю, и вам интересно, какая из самых сильных стрессовых реакций сработает. Биоинженеры в один голос утверждали, что только одна, отображающая взаимосвязь между интенсивностью и продолжительностью раздражителя и реакцией. - только одна, одна она, одна кто???

expansive, self-congratulatory European-Americans average out at higher than the middle rung (what Adler calls her Lake Wobegon Effect, where all the children are above average) - усредненные ответы экспансивных, склонных к самовосхвалению американцев европейского происхождения группируются выше средней ступеньки (что Адлер называет эффектом озера Вобегон, в соответствии с которым все дети оценивают себя выше среднего уровня) - да никакие дети себя не оценивают, это цитата.
It is named for the fictional town of Lake Wobegon from the radio series A Prairie Home Companion, where, according to Garrison Keillor, "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average". - деревья у них выше, трава зеленее, выработка чугуна самая большая в мире.

Хочется даже не редактора этой книге пожелать, а сжечь ее, сжечь что-нибудь еще, взять оригинал и перевести заново, желательно в прекрасной России будущего.

A few months ago someone linked me to a YouTube lecture of Sapolsky talking about the biochemical origins of depression. I promptly put it on the background and went to do other things, except I didn't do other things, because I sat there for an hour being riveted to this guy's talk. And then I figured I should maybe pick up one of his books, and this was on sale, and, you know. Fate.

The title makes it sound like it's some kind of self-help book about how to feel less stress. It's not. It's about the biological origins and sequelae of stress. Basically, the thesis of the book is "stress is incredibly bad for your body and here's why." In detail. With explanations of exactly how your brain is doing this to you. (The content of the depression lecture I saw is also a chapter in here.) So, I mean, there are ways to feel less stress explained in here but they're all things like "be born in a higher socioeconomic class to parents who love you and while you're at it don't experience any childhood trauma." So, you know, not something you can really do a lot about. Except maybe, y'know, exercise once in a while.

You'd think that this book might be depressing. Maybe it is for some people. I am certainly a very anxious person and I kept anticipating that every chapter would bum me out -- but, weirdly, it did not. I just basically devoured the whole book! Yes! Stress! Tell me more! Honestly, I think I feel less scared of things like that if it's explained in detail, so that I know exactly what is going on and then it doesn't feel so... arbitrary, if that makes any sense. Instead of being like "well, my brain just hates me" I can be like "aha! glucocorticoids!" and somehow knowing that actually makes me feel better.

So if this sounds like the kind of book you might like, you'll probably really, really enjoy it. And if you think it might freak you out -- I mean, it actually might not! I was definitely wrong about that! I feel like everyone should give this book a try, honestly. Especially in These Plague Times. I mean, we're all pretty stressed right now.

Libro que debería leer todo el mundo. Explica muy bien las consecuencias del estrés en el cuerpo y la mente, pero acabas con más ansiedad de la que tenías antes de empezar a leerlo

This is an excellent book, I don't know why I had such a hard time beginning it, I kept starting and stopping it for several years. Maybe this was because the writer has a somewhat rambling and loose style. Finally, I forced myself to get through the first few pages and the book got better and better once I relaxed into the writer's way of thinking.

It's an unusual book because it explains deep medical concepts for everyone, and it is a relaxed read considering the subject matter. It's a good review for doctors. The graphs are good. There are about fifty-five cartoons sprinkled throughout. There is an excellent section of Notes (almost a hundred pages) and a fairly skimpy index (he left out FOADS, lordosis, etc.). If you plan to read this book, do a quick overview study of glucocorticoids. Glucocorticoids (cortisol, etc.) are powerful steroid hormones and are released from the adrenal cortex and are players in all body functions. Stress of every kind can release them.

Zebras don't get ulcers because they don't use their brains to think stressfully and worry as humans do. When survival is threatened, zebras instinctively react to flee or fight and that's the end of it. Humans have survival thoughts which are often imaginary, as in anxiety and panic attacks. Humans worry and stress themselves unnecessarily. That's my conclusion from the book, but there was much more information, especially about hormones and the nervous system and how behavior and body chemistry is influenced by thought. This book also reinforced for me a conclusion that joy and happiness and pleasure are probably more important than anything else for good health.

When we merely think, we stimulate the hypothalamus and pituitary and adrenal glands (the "HPA axis") to release various extremely powerful physiological chemicals such as cortisol and adrenalin. Stress and negative thoughts can cause illness when our thoughts and feelings are too negative and and stress can release an imbalance of these powerful substances which can actually damage the brain with atrophy of the hypothalamus and loss of brain volume.

There are chapters dealing with heart disease, ulcers, bowel dysfunctions, sex, auto-immune diseases, AIDS/HIV, pain, addictions, diabetes, inflammation, sleep, depression, aging, memory, dwarfism, fetal touch and more – you name it. More and more, there seems to be a major psychological factor in most disease. Disease can start with thoughts.

My least favorite chapter was on "Cancer and Miracles" where the author calls Bernard Seigel's book "Love, Medicine and Miracles" gibberish and worse. Saporsky says "...inflamed me when first reading this book" and he spends three pages telling how horrible Seigel's book is. Saporsky is soundly against New Age spirituality. I have not read Seigel's book and I have not studied New Age thinking, but I thought much of Saporsky's book seems to support love, medicine and miracles, especially where he describes how important fetal touch is and how actual dwarfism can develop from lack of maternal love. His example is the author of "Peter Pan", J. M. Barrie who was only five feet tall from lack of love. Saporsky sounds just as New Age as Siegel. Hypocrisy?

Pregnant women should think happy thoughts because it's been shown that thoughts of the mother can physically affect the fetal brain. FOAD (the fetal origin of adult disease) shows dramatic metabolic imprinting from the mother. This imprinting includes the early programming of the fetal brain with lifetime imprinting of the cortisol axis. So it's not enough to keep stress out of your own life, you need to have had a happy, contented pregnant mother when you were a fetus.

The subject matter is not for the faint of heart; this is definitely not the scientific work for the layman. Although it is full of interesting facts and wittily told, it fails to prove that depression is a biological affair, not a psychological one.

Non-Fiction. Twelve chapters on how stress is going to kill you, followed by six chapters on why stress is stressful, when it's not, and what we can do about it.

If you're a worrier, this may not be the book for you. I won't lie, it upset me in the beginning. There are so many ways that stress can affect your health, your memory, the way you age, how you deal with stressors, and even how your children deal with stressors. The book can become a source of stress itself, one that far outweighs the few methods it gives for dealing with stress. But it addresses a lot of important issues, like the economics of stress and the way poverty and pay inequality have life-long health ramifications. It's not just about stress on a personal level, but a social, cultural, and political one. It also looks at the role stress plays in mental illness, pain, infertility, and addiction.

The science can be quite dense at times, but Sapolsky is good at walking you through it and recalling topics he introduced earlier so you never have to feel like you're studying for something. He makes this easy to read, even if the subject is a difficult one. He's a great writer with a sense of humor, an obvious love of science, and respect for views that aren't his own. He offers multiple approaches for any given problem and points out questions we don't have answers for yet.

Four stars. Good science writing that challenges assumptions and doesn't take itself too seriously. Also includes extensive end notes and an index. If you read this, get the third edition; it's revised and updated.