I read this on the recommendation of an Ezra Klein podcast.

Unlike zebras, we get stressed because we're constantly worrying about the future.

Takeaways included: sleep is really valuable and waking up for hours in the middle of the night is a classic symptom of depression; prolonged depression elevates risk of heart disease three- to four-fold; abusive parenting lifts the risk of adult depression; the role of learned helplessness; feeling chronically time-pressured is a function of a chronic need to prove oneself due to feeling insecure.

There are no silver bullets. Only to strive for more of a sense of control, more predictability, more outlets and more social affiliation.

This is hands down the best medical book I have ever read. In a series of memorable and highly amusing stories and anecdotes Sapolsky explains the complex biology behind why well known principles of psychology, religion, new age philosophy and even voodoo curses work.

The central story of the book is how the fight or flight response – the most powerful force that has shaped vertebrate evolution for hundreds of millions of years - is now being turned against modern humans through chronic stress and anxiety. He outlines how modern stress triggers that have nothing to do with immediate survival - whether brought on from traffic, bad bosses, bad relationships - can be linked to exacerbating the development of almost every modern epidemic from cancer to colitis, depression to dwarfism, diabetes to diarrhea, heart disease to infertility to immune disorders.

The book concludes with some stories about coping with stress, and the unique psychological profiles of the people who avoid the development of stress-related diseases and experience health improvements with aging in a process he calls “successful aging.”

Should be compulsory reading for every high school biology student. A thorough dismantling of the reductionist cell biology mindset of the 20th century, Sapolsky shows you how very complex and intricate the interaction is between organism and environment, and how 'genes' may be overrated in a lot of ways.

Zebras don't get ulcers because they kick anyone trying to shove a endoscope into any of their orifices. What you can't see doesn't exist

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.

I have so much to say about this book but I’ll try to summarize it into a few points:

1. A lot of the concepts in this book was illustrated with the dichotomy of “westernized” and “non-westernized” people as a shorthand for developed and non-developed societies, which I found dated (despite me reading the latest revised edition published in 2004) and bordering on offensive. Based on this alone, I might’ve given the book 1 or 2 stars.

2. The science in this one was well summarized and generally engaging. A lot of it was not new to me and which I had learnt in Physiology classes back in university, but I appreciated some concepts on a deeper level given the way Sapolsky explains it. Sometimes the technical jargon can get a bit heavy and my eyes would glaze over if I was reading the ebook, and in times like these I much preferred the audiobook. I would’ve given this aspect 4 stars.

3. A special shout-out to the last chapter about managing stress, which I found exceptionally well done compared to the rest of the book.

I find that there’s been not enough said about Point 1 in particular in the reviews for this book so I’ll devote a bit of my review to calling that out.

A huge part of this book is concerned about how far human society has evolved compared to wild animals but a lot of our physiological stress responses hasn’t quite caught up with that. There’s even a motif through this book about a zebra escaping from a lion on the savannah, which lends to the title of the book and is a way Sapolsky uses to illustrate what we have evolved to do (short-burst fight or flight physiological responses) compared to what we actually do in this time and age (utilizing what is meant to be short-burst responses but dragging that out into prolonged stress responses to human society things like mortgages, job security, anxiety over our long-term health, our children, etc.).

All of that is well and good, but what I raise issue with is how Sapolsky basically divides humanity into two halves: you’re either “westernized” or “non-westernized”. If you’re “westernized”, you live in the most advanced frontier of humanity and your society has developed far along enough that you’re dealing with high-end jobs and therefore high-end stressors. This book is written about and for you. If you’re a “non-westernized” person, then you’re literally not far from that zebra being chased by the lion on the savannah. Here are some quotes to back that up (from the 3rd revised edition published in 2004):

”If you’re a human, having enough food and water for this meal, but not being sure where the next meal is coming from is a major stressor as well, one of the defining experiences of life outside the westernized world.” (Ch 5)

”Stress-induced glucocorticoid secretion works roughly the same in all the mammals, birds, and fish..and it has only been in the last half-century or so that westernized versions of just one of those species had much of a chance of surviving something like a stroke." (Ch 10)

So yes, if you’re from a “non-westernized” part of the world, you’re definitely going to be so poor and living in the wild that your “defining experience of life” will be not being sure where your next meal is going to come from. You also would have not much of a chance surviving a stroke because of course the healthcare in your society is likely to be non-existent, given how backward your society even is. Do you even have a society or are you just troops of animals living in the wild?

Another example of this casual racism is found in Ch 9, where Sapolsky talks about stress and pain. He zooms in on how acupuncture, a traditionally East Asian medical technique dating back thousands of years, has been found to release opioids to help patients deal with pain. He notes that “Western scientist” had heard of it and “[dumped] it into a bucket of anthropological oddities—inscrutable Chinese herbalists sticking needles into people, Haitian shamans killing with voodoo curses, Jewish mothers curing any and all disease with their secret-recipe chicken soup.” OK, already eyebrow-raising but at least he acknowledged that they were dumping it into a bucket, although I would raise issue with how these are written off as “anthropological oddities”. “Western science” hasn’t yet figured out how they worked or bothered spending money researching into them but that doesn’t mean that they’re entirely nonsense just because they originated from a non-Western/non-white society.

But I haven’t come to my point about this chapter. The concern here is about how to tell if these techniques really were objectively efficacious or if they were some kind of cultural placebo, where the people within these societies have been raised to believe in the efficacy of it and therefore derived those benefits from them, even if they were objectively useless. Sapolsky then talks about a “prominent Western journalist” (see the continued emphasis on ‘Western’) being administered acupuncture in China for pain relief after an appendicitis surgery: ”He survived just fine. Hey, this stuff must be legit—it even works on white guys.” I quote this verbatim and Sapolsky doesn’t even seem to be writing this in any kind of satire. Non-Western techniques are only legitimized when they work on “white guys”. No matter how many countries and people have benefited from them in the past thousands of years, it’s obviously all bogus until “white guys” or “Western science” says they aren't. This language and concept is just so extremely problematic in this time and age.

So… I won’t go into the actual science of the book beyond what I summarized in my points above, because there’re plenty of reviews already that talk about it here. I just wanted this review to focus primarily on the points that probably a lot of people even today would glaze over but which I really think shouldn’t be ignored. The book’s science is solid and engaging, but my enjoyment of the book overall was dampened significantly by the casual racism peppered through the book.

4 stars because the science is so interesting and Sapolsky is such an entertaining writer.
The author, however, so obviously has a social agenda which in my opinion diminishes the credence of a science book.

I just really love Robert Sapolsky. I was familiar with a lot of stuff covered in the book but I still really enjoyed reading through it. Personally feel like he's a very good science communicator and makes things digestible in a way that's accessible for everyone without really losing much of the nuance. I really don't know what else to write, usually when I write long reviews its because I have a lot of pent up irritation to vent but when I love things I'm just like guys this is good totally would recommend. I do think I enjoyed Behave a lot more though because it covers a lot more biology/plus I learnt a lot of new things from it. Also really appreciate him providing context on the limitations of what one can really do to cope with inequity especially when I see so much pop psychology being about just trying to make everyone have grit or whatever.

This book is simply exquisite. Sapolsky is a fantastic scientist as well as a wonderful writer. In this book, he will help you understand the evolutionary purpose of the stress response and elucidate why we differ so much from other animals. We humans have a useful stress response but use it in very unuseful ways.

If you read this book, you will be treated to the wonderful and unexpected story of J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan. What does his life have to do with the neuroscience of stress? Read and find out! You will not be disappointed.

The science nerd in me really enjoyed listening to this engaging book about the physiology of stress in our bodies, and all the links between stress and disease, weight, sleep, memory, etc. A little anxiety producing, since I’m a worrier and suffer from occasional situational anxiety myself. Most of this somewhat too long book is about the biological mechanisms and relatively little is about the means to deal with stress in one’s own life. That’s ok though. The author is good at making the science understandable for non-scientists and uses humor effectively. I wish I’d had him for a teacher in some of my dense coursework. One of the big coping mechanisms for stress and anxiety he mentions is aerobic exercise, which segues perfectly into my current audiobook about the biological benefits of exercise for the brain. My runner friends and I talk about running being our therapy, and the research supports that being literally true.

Ніби є популярна думка, що всі хвороби від нервів. Ну не всі, але чимало.
В цій книзі описано як саме стрес робить недобре на фізіологічному рівні.
деякі дослідження давно популяризовані, деякі досить неочікувані.
Раптом відчула спорідненість з гієнами і поставила нагадування на медитацію.
Чудовий український переклад.

I'm absolutely in love with Robert sapolsky style of writing.