Sapolsky is an amazing writer and Primate's Memoir ranks as one of my favorite books. That said, the title, cover, and prior experience with Primate's Memoir led me to have unrealistic expectations of this book. It is thorough and well-written, but approaches the topic of stress from a phsyiological perspective that doesn't spare any of the details. As such, it often calmed my stress by putting me to sleep. The subtitle's promise of a section on "coping" with stress didn't pan out, and amounted to a few pages of an attempt at the end of the book. If you're looking for a tutorial on the physiology of stress and its relationship to a wide variety of human ailments and conditions (sickness, age, gender, etc.) then you might like this more than I did.

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.

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.

It turned out not to be all that I expected.
It started off well, providing a wealth of research-based information on how stress affects health, and then spiraled off into an incredibly repetitive and somewhat outdated post.
Non-fiction texts, especially when they aim to analyze the relationship between mind and body, fascinate me, this one bored me.
A pity

I can't comment on the factual accuracy of the bulk of this book, because it's outside my field of expertise, but the material about J. M. Barrie ranges from carelessly inaccurate to outright fictitious. Sapolsky claims to have researched the writer's life, but gets many basic facts wrong, and appears to have invented things (e.g. sadomasochistic writings, a history of child sexual abuse) which no biographer has ever mentioned. See http://neverpedia.com/pan/Why_Zebras_... for details.

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.

Yes, it took me almost 3 years to read this book. I didn’t want to half-ass it. I took notes and reread things that were confusing and really tried to get all I could out of it. I wanted to push myself to read an informational book about a topic I’m fascinated by, but once reading it by choice started to feel like a chore, I had to switch it up and read other books in between.

Robert Sapolsky is a genius and demonstrates throughout the book how qualified he is to write a book about stress. The sections (and there were a lot of them) about exactly what goes on in the body during stress and what happens as a result were made as entertaining and engaging as possible because of his writing style and expertise. It feels unfair for me to rate this book less because it was too “scienc-y” or technical because that’s exactly what it claims to be.

What’s cool about me reading this book at the time I did is that I feel like I’ve learned a lot about myself and therefore curated and improved my own stress responses in the past 2 years. It’s not until the end of the book that Sapolsky really dives into how to deal with stress and it felt really validating that many of the strategies I use are backed by actual science and research.

"Be abejo, viena pagrindinių šios knygos temų: kiek daug žalos stresas gali
padaryti organizmui ir kaip svarbu, kad visi tai suprastume. Tačiau pervertinti iš to išplaukiančias išvadas būtų siaubingai trumparegiška. Negali visi vaikai užaugę tapti prezidentais; pasirodo, susikabinę už rankučių ir kartu traukdami liaudies dainas karų neužbaigsime, o alkis neišnyksta ėmus pasaulį įsivaizduoti be jo. Ne visos šiuolaikinės žmonių sveikatos problemos kyla iš streso, klaikiausių medicininių košmarų nenusikratysime vien tik vengdami streso ir užpildydami protą sveikomis, drąsos, dvasingumo bei meilės kupinomis mintimis. Norėčiau, kad taip būtų. O bandantiems pelnytis pardavinėjant tokias idėjas turėtų būti gėda."

"Pasaulis gali būti baugus ir visai imanoma, kad mūsy organizme atsispindi
pastangos atsargiai ir sėkmingai įveikti tamsių ir grėsmingų gyvenimo girių
takus. Išties būtų daug maloniau atsipalaidavus sėdeti saulės užlietoje vilos terasoje, toli toli nuo to laukinio kauksmo. Tačiau tai, kas iš pirmo žvilgsnio primena atsipalaidavimą, iš tiesų gali būti išsekimas: žmonės išsenka bestatydami
sieną aplink savo vilą, dėdami visas pastangas neįsileisti nestabilaus, iššūkių
kupino gyvo pasaulio. Išstumtų / užgniaužtų emocijų charakterio žmonės ir
ju nematoma našta mus moko, kad kartais pasaulio be stresorių kūrimas gali
sukelti nepaprastai daug streso."

A good introduction to the effects of stress on human physiology, as good, and comprehensive as a lay-person can wish for. It elaborates greatly on the negative effects of artificially, and repeatedly triggering stress responses that were evolved to get us out of mortal danger, at the same time giving clear headed explanations as to why these responses might be useful in the first place, and why they are beneficial when controlled, and used sparingly.

All in all, for someone who had little knowledge about anything stress related, this has given me plenty of starting point to do further research.

De recitit.
O carte esențială oricărui novice deoarece Robert Sapolsky are harul de a sintetiza informația la un nivel atât de simplist încât ar fi o insultă să nu încerci a-l citi.
Urmează - "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst".

Review it later.

If I had to read the word "glucocorticoid" one more time, I might have thrown this book out of the window. Essentially, I have learned that every stressful event causes me to lose days off my life, which caused me to stress out, which shortened my life, which stressed me out... you get the point.
I glazed over a bunch of the scientific stuff... which actually says something because I took these classes in college on purpose. I think that's what it was... I felt like I was back in school. There were a few very interesting snippets, which is why I bumped this to 2 stars. That's it... no more to say... time to move on..