Kerrassaan oivallinen ja kattava kirja stressistä, siitä mitä se meille tekee ja mitä se ei tee. Ja mitä sille voi tehdä. Ei typeriä kikkakolmosia vaan laajaa tietämystä ja sujuvaa tekstiä.

This book is so very good despite it being so very long. Most books mention stress as this bad thing that causes all kinds of ailments, but Robert Sapolsky really goes onto depth and explains the biological mechanisms behind a variety of things that are related to stress, and he does it well scientifically. On top of this feat, he's also a great writer with the talent of making an expository text interesting and hard to put down. Think Bill Bryson but add a ton of scientific rigor. This is astounding - a balancing act of making the text entertaining while keeping it at a high scientific standard is difficult to pull off. Plus, as a scientist myself, I'm normally not interested in reading about science - either it's not rigorous enough, or it's too academic for my leisure time given I already deal with this stuff for work. I also liked that the author was modest, seemingly not an uberego, which as a lady in academia is appreciated - especially at Stanford, where I encountered way too many of these egomaniacs!

I enjoyed this book but think for most people this book will not be more than a 3.5* hence the rating. My bias is simply that I and am a big fan of Dr Sapolsky after attending his course on Human Behavioral Biology. He covers the driest of things with humor and charm. I would recommend the first four lectures to everyone.

Our body is designed to respond to stressful situations. We are, just like the zebra, wired to temporarily alter our physiology when a lion shows up during our leisurely afternoon stroll. The difference is the zebra goes back to regular life after, but humans seem to treat a myriad of situations as if the lion is back and the stress-response that the body goes through takes a toll on our bodies.

Take the cardiovascular system. When you see the lion (or have an important presentation or an impending difficult conversation), your body starts prepping and marshaling all the resources in the body to get the hell out of there. Your digestive tract shuts down, breathing rate skyrockets, the heart beats faster and your blood pressure goes up. This entire routine saves you from being lunch but is expensive in the long run. For example, as part of the response, the blood pounds through your veins and returns with deafening force to the heart. Now, if this happens very often, the walls of the heart will be forced to thicken to accommodate this regular flood and cause ventricular hypertrophy. In addition, if you chronically increase the force with which blood is coursing through the vessels they have to work harder, it needs more muscle, this thick layer of muscle makes it more rigid and more resistant to flow hence persistent high blood pressure.

As he describes it, your heart is basically a pump with hoses. Subject it to this treatment too often and it will wear out. He then goes on to cover ulcers, aging, sleep, metabolism etc.

The bottom line is this : Chill out and don’t kill yourself. If you want the details read the book, otherwise just remember that most of the stressors in your life are not really life-threatening so leave the panic for when you do meet the lion.

Extremely well researched and detailed book about our body's sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and how they impact our emotions and behaviors. I learned so much. At times I found it overly technical but Sapolsky does a wonderful job summarizing the technical parts so I never felt too lost.

Some quotes from the book that stood out to me:

Sustained psychological stress is a recent invention, mostly limited to humans and other social primates. We can experience wildly strong emotions(provoking our bodies into an accompanying uproar) linked to mere thoughts.

A stressor is anything in the outside world that knocks you out of homeostatic balance, and the stress response is what your body does to reestablish homeostasis. A stressor can also be the anticipation of something happening. Based only on anticipation, we can turn on a stress response as robust as if the event had actually occurred.

With sufficient activation, the stress response can become more damaging than the stressor itself, especially when the stress is purely psychological. This is a critical concept, because it underlies the emergence of much stress related disease.

A large percentage of what we think of when we talk about stress related diseases are disorders of excessive stress responses.

Never is the maladaptiveness of the stress response during psychological stress clearer than in the case of the cardiovascular system.

CRP(c reactive protein) levels are turning out to be a much better predictor of cardiovascular disease risk than cholesterol.

If you are turning on your sympathetic nervous system all the time, you are chronically shutting off the parasympathetic system. And this makes it harder to slow things down, even during those rare moments when you're not feeling stressed about something.

When you have a somewhat under-active stress response you have trouble mobilizing energy in response to the demands of daily life. That is precisely what is seen in individuals with chronic fatigue syndrome, which is characterized by, among other things, too low levels of glucocorticoids in the bloodstream.

If you activate the stress response too often you wind up expending so much energy that as a first consequence, you tire more readily.

Stress makes 2/3s of people hyperphagic(want to eat more) and 1/3 hypophagic(want to eat less)

Suppose you feel terrible and the docs can't find a thing wrong. Congratulations, you now have a functional GI disorder. These are immensely sensitive to stress. This is not just touchy feely psychologists saying this. Ongoing stress is closely related to IBS.

Chronic stress increases the risk of osteoporosis.

***Everything bad in human health is not caused by stress, nor is it in our power to cure ourselves merely by reducing stress and thinking healthy thoughts full of courage and spirit and love. Would that it were so. And shame on those who would profit from selling this view.

It is surprising how malleable pain signals are - how readily the intensity of a pain signal is changed by the sensations, feelings & thoughts that coincide with the pain. One example is the blunting of pain perception during some circumstances of stress.

A striking aspect of the pain system is how readily it can be modulated by other factors. The strength of the pain signal can depend on what other sensory info is funneled to the spine at the same time. Chronic throbbing pain can be inhibited by certain types of sharp & brief sensory stimulation.

The most relevant dichotomy is between nerve fibers that carry info about sharp sudden pain & fibers that carry info about constant diffuse pain. Fast fibers are about getting you to move as quickly as possible from the source of the piercing pain. Slow fibers are about getting you to hunker down, immobile, so you can heal.

Sometimes something goes wrong with pain pathways and you feel pain in response to stimuli that shouldn't be painful. Now you've got allodynia, which is feeling pain in response to a normal stimulus.

The emotional/interpretive level can be dissociated from the objective amount of pain signal. In other words, how much pain you feel and how unpleasant that pain feels, can be two separate things.

What if you are the sort of person where just seeing the nurse take the cap off the needle makes your arm throb? What we've got now is stress-induced hyperalgesia. Valium blocks stress induced hyperalgesia.

People with anxiety disorders have exaggerated startle responses.

Anxiety is about dread and foreboding and your imagination running away with you. It is rooted in a cognitive distortion. Anxious people overestimate risks and the likelihood of a bad outcome.

What is anxiety? A sense of disquiet, of the sands constantly shifting menacingly beneath your feet where constant vigilance is the only hope of effectively protecting yourself. Life consists of the concrete, agitated present of solving a problem that someone else might not even consider to exist.

5% of the population have chronically activated stress responses. What's their problem? These are the archetypal people who cross all their t's & dot their i's. They describe themselves as planners who don't like surprises. They live structured lives, walking to work the same way each day, the sort of people who can tell you what they are having for lunch in two weeks. Not surprisingly, they don't like ambiguity and strive to set up their world in black & white. They are stoic, regimented, hardworking people who are fine but have overactive stress responses. The levels of glucocorticoids in their bloodstream as elevated and they have elevated sympathetic tone as well.When exposed to a cognitive challenge, they show unusually large increases in heart rate, blood pressure, sweating and muscle tension....Back to our envious thought, "I wish I had their discipline, how do they do it?" They do it by working like maniacs to generate their structured repressed world with no surprises. And that comes with a physiological bill. It can be enormously stressful to construct a world without stressors.

Sapolsky’s book examines why stress and stress-related illnesses are rampant in humans. As the title suggests, prey on the Serengeti Plain, animals that are chased by fierce and fast predators, aren’t nearly so likely to suffer the ill effects of stress—despite living in a harsher world than most of humanity. To oversimplify, this has a lot to do with the fact that one downside of our big brains is an ability to obsess about what has happened and what might happen, and our sympathetic nervous system (i.e. the fight or flight mechanism) can be triggered even when there is no immediate threat in reality. In short, humans can uniquely worry themselves to death. Sapolsky gets into much great detail and lets the reader know what is known and what remains to be uncovered with respect to stress.

In almost 600 pages, arranged into 18 chapters, Sapolsky covers human stress in fine detail. While it’s a book written for a lay audience, it’s not a quick and easy read. The book discusses topics like the action of neurotransmitters and hormones, and, while it assumes no particular science background, it does assume a broadly educated and curious reader.

The chapters begin by looking at the stress mechanism from a physiological perspective. It then considers stress with respect to specific illnesses, the relationship between stress and various other topics in human being (e.g. sleep, pain, and memory.) The final chapter offers insight into how one can reduce one’s bad stress and one’s risk of stress-related illness. Among the most interesting topics are what personalities are particularly prone to stress-related illness and why psychological stress (as opposed to stress based in immediate real world stressors) is stressful.

Sapolsky has a sense of humor and knows how to convey information to a non-expert audience, but this isn’t the simplest book on the subject. It’s an investment of time and energy to complete reading this book, but it’s worth it if one’s interest in the subject is extensive enough. One of the strengths of the book is that it stays firmly in the realm of science. Because stress has been wrongly considered a fluff subject, many of the works on the topic—even those by individuals with MD or PhD after their names—have been new-agey or pseudo-scientific. This book stays firmly in the realm of science. Sapolsky explains what the studies have shown, and he tells the reader clearly when there is a dearth of evidence or contradictory findings.

If the reader has a deep interest in stress-related health problems, I’d highly recommend this book.

Sapolsky's 'Behave' was in my list of favourites back in 2021. So when I got to know about this book, it it was a must-read, and that title really helped. The book was originally written in 1994, and is now in its third edition, so things continue to be updated.
He gets the title out of the way very quickly, and this is perhaps the underlying premise of the book - zebras, and the lions who chase them both are stressed, and their bodies are brilliantly adapted to handle these emergencies - fear of life and fear of starvation respectively. Go up to the apex predator - humans, and it can even handle things like drought, famine, pests. But when we include psychological and social disruptions - from finding a parking spot to an unpleasant conversation with a manager/spouse etc - and start worrying about them, we turn on the same physiological responses. When this is chronic (and it is - think about the things you get stressed about daily), the stress response itself becomes harmful to the body, sometimes even more than the stressor itself. Because they were not meant to do this all the while, they were only for emergencies!
The early pages also draw out a significant difference - between homeostasis and allostasis. 'The brain seeks homeostasis', but the concept itself is now modernised because there is no single optimal level (e.g. it can't be the same when sleeping vs skiing) and because we now understand that the point cannot always be reached by a local regulatory mechanism, it requires 'the brain coordinating body-wide changes, often including changes in behaviour'. And this tinkering has its own second-order consequences. Even more complicated because in allostatic thinking, there can be changes made in anticipation of a level going awry. When it is stressed for 'emergencies', the body goes for homeostasis, with consequences in the long run.
The book then traces out the working of the brain - and the regulation of glands and hormones (and how it is different in males and females), before getting into specific areas that stress specialises in! This includes physiological things cardiovascular health, ulcers and IBS, (oh, if only I knew this 3 years ago, I would have been better equipped to deal with idiot doctors) pregnancy and parenting, sex and reproduction, pain, immunity and diseases, memory, sleep, cancer (the jury is still out on this) and aging and death, as well as psychological domains like addiction, depression. It also looks at how temperament and personality can either assist or resist stress.
In the personality section, Sapolsky practically described my (former) Type A personality down to a behavioural "time-pressuredness" (research by Meyer Friedman and colleagues), default hostility, and a persistent sense of insecurity, the last being a predictor of cardiovascular problems. Add to it disciplined, discomfort with ambiguity, and (formerly) repressive in terms of emotional expression, and you have my profile! Damn!
Towards the end, there is also a very interesting section (and studies) on how socio-economic-status (SES) can affect stress. The poor have more chronic daily stressors, and feeling poor (not the same as being poor) in our socioeconomic world (digital media expands 'our' from friends, family and neighbours to anyone on Insta) predicts poor health. Income inequality predicts mortality rates across all ages in the US.
The last chapter is on managing stress - exercise, meditation, increasing control and predictability, social support, finding outlets for frustration. And building coping mechanisms around fixed rules and flexible strategies - when stress management is not working, instead of trying extra hard on our preferred strategy - problem solving/emotional/social support - switch the approach.
I was expecting a fair amount of trudging and it turned out to be that way. But it is definitely fascinating to see the stress fingerprint in so many of our ailments - ranging from very visible to almost invisible. Great book, if you have the interest and patience for it. :)

1. Water shortage in California. Homeostatic solution: mandate smaller water tanks. Allostatic: smaller toilet tanks, convince people to conserve water, buy rice from SE Asia instead of doing water-intensive farming in a semi-arid state.
2. When stressed, the sympathetic nervous system is activated, the parasympathetic nervous system is turned down, the heart shifts into a higher gear, glucocorticoids enter the play enhancing the effects of epinephrine and norepinephrine. As a result blood pressure goes up, the blood sent to nonessential areas like digestive tract and kidneys go down (fascinating how we wet our pants in fear though the kidney function is kept low - basically to remove excess water quickly from the bladder). Chronic use of this mechanism promotes plaque formation in arteries by increasing the chances of blood vessels being damaged and inflamed and the likelihood of platelets, fat, cholesterol sticking to those areas.
3. Also when stressed, the contractions in the colon increase to get rid of the 'dead weight'. See how IBS and diarrhoea works!
4. In a British Victorian family, the mother's favourite son David dies and she takes to bed, ignoring her 6 year old son. And when the boy comes to the darkened room, she asks 'David, is that you?', before saying 'Oh, it's only you'. The younger boy stops growing, because this is the only way he seems to get some chance of affection. He is J M Barrie, the author of Peter Pan!
5. Stress-induced analgesia (not feeling pain during strenuous activities - from war to exercise) and stress- induced hyperalgesia (feeling more pain, e.g. waiting for a dentist) Both are emotional reactivity to pain and do not involve pain receptors or the spinal cord.
6. Personality style can lead to stress-related disease - either due to a mismatch between the magnitude of stressors and respective stress responses, or even reacting to a situation that is not a stressor
7. How does social capital turn into better health throughout the community? Less social isolation. More rapid diffusion of health information. Potentially social constraints on publicly unhealthy behaviour. Less psychological stress. Better organised groups demanding better public services.
8. If you want to improve health and quality of life, and decrease the stress, for the average person in a society, you do so by spending money on public goods - better public transit, safer streets, cleaner water, better public schools, universal health care. The bigger the income inequality is in a society, the greater the financial distance between the wealthy and the average. The bigger the distance between the wealthy and the average, the less benefit the wealthy will feel from expenditures on the public good. Instead they would derive much more benefit by spending the same (taxed) money on their private good - a better chauffeur, a gated community, bottled water, private schools, private health insurance. As (Robert) Evans writes, "The more unequal are incomes in a society, the more pronounced will be its disadvantages to its better-off members from public expenditure, and the more resources will those members have (available to them) to mount effective political opposition." He notes how this "secession of the wealthy" pushes toward "private affluence and public squalor". And more public squalor means more of the daily stressors and allostatic load that drives down health for everyone. For the wealthy, this is because of the costs of walling themselves off from the rest of society, and for the rest of the society because they have to live in it.
8. Heaven, we are told, consists of spending all of eternity in the study of the holy books. In contrast, hell consists of spending all of eternity in the study of the holy books. :D
9. In a diagnosis that helps explain the confusing and contradictory aspects of the cosmos that have baffled philosophers, theologians, and other students of the human condition for millennia, God, creator of the universe and longtime deity to billions of followers, was found Monday to suffer from bipolar disorder. ~ The Onion https://www.theonion.com/god-diagnose...

An amazing science communicator. Just read it. Reviews are boring.

While it can get a bit boring due to the science-focused explanations, it is very informative and anyone who has taken a physiological psychology class, or anyone who wants to know how stress can affect you physically, will appreciate this book.

PLEASE NOTE: Part of physiological psychology and stress is talking about sex. This walks the line between blunt and graphic but does it due to how the body works together, so it is for a purpose.

Recommended 16+ for all of the science, the adult part in chapter 2, discussions of sex, and topics that younger readers may not understand.

I really have nothing to add to the top review on this at the moment by uhh, user Always Pouting. I picked it up because I really like Robert Sapolsky, and while I didn't learn a ton of new stuff here, it's exactly the kind of thing I would recommend to someone who wants to learn more because Robert Sapolsky is really good at explaining things in a way anyone can understand. I didn't think this book was perfect, but it's a good jumping off point for considering how stress impacts you from a scientific perspective.

DNF

Trying something new and NOT finishing a book which is really big for my control freak perfectionist personality. Please clap.

This book wasn't bad, I just wasn't really learning anything new and was kinda bored. All the physiology i learned in school, and to sum up the social stuff: don't be born poor or in a marginalized group of people bc its stressful and will impact your health.

من دیگه نمی‌تونم ادامه بدم!
به عنوان اولین کتابی که نیمه‌خوان رها شدی می‌پذیرمت :(

O pierdere de timp

Așa aș descrie această carte. Asta aș scrie chiar pe copertă. De ce cred asta? Haideți să analizăm mai multe aspecte ale cărții:

1. Terminologia de specialitate
Cartea folosește o mulțime de termeni de specialitate, iar autorul pare să presupună că toți cititorii au experiență în domeniul medical. Deși nu este neapărat dificilă de parcurs, abundența acestor termeni devine obositoare, chiar dacă sunt explicați ocazional. Problema este că sunt atât de mulți încât devine aproape imposibil să-i ții minte, mai ales că, de obicei, sunt definiți o singură dată, iar apoi reapar peste multe capitole.
Deși cartea este etichetată ca fiind destinată "oricui", oricărei persoane interesate să înțeleagă efectele stresului asupra sănătății, stilul său face ca aceasta să fie mai degrabă potrivită pentru un public specializat.

2. Cum putem diminua efectele stresului?
Pe copertă scrie mare "cum îl putem combate", referindu-se, desigur, la stres. Sunt o persoană care se stresează foarte ușor și adesea mă confrunt cu stres din diverse motive. Din acest motiv, aveam mari așteptări de la această carte, sperând că va fi un remediu. A fost așa? Din păcate, nu.
Pe măsură ce citeam cartea și eram tot mai dezamăgit, am început să caut alte surse de informare despre metodele de combatere a stresului și chiar am reușit să fac câțiva pași în direcția dorită. Însă acest progres nu a avut nicio legătură cu cartea. Promite multe, dar oferă foarte puțin. Numărul de "sfaturi" prezentate este atât de mare și de complicat încât autorul mi le putea rezuma într-un apel telefonic. Și sincer, dacă nu i-aș fi acordat atenție în timpul apelului, probabil că rezultatul ar fi fost același.

3. Conținut
Dacă nu oferă soluții concrete, atunci despre ce este cartea? Care este conținutul celor peste 600 de pagini?
Autorul ne explică în detaliu efectele negative ale stresului asupra organismului. Din păcate, nu este nimic revoluționar aici. Poate că este doar cazul meu, dar eram deja familiarizat cu multe dintre ideile prezentate. E drept, autorul le explică în detaliu, însă uneori nu simțeam nevoia unui nivel atât de profund de informație.
Unele părți sunt interesante, mai ales cele în care explică mecanismele unor boli și legătura lor cu stresul. Cu toate acestea, paralelele frecvente cu lumea animală devin, în timp, repetitive și plictisitoare.