Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Third Edition by Robert M. Sapolsky (EPUB)

Description

Renowned primatologist Robert Sapolsky offers a completely revised and updated edition of his most popular work, with over 225,000 copies in print Now in a third edition, Robert M. Sapolsky’s acclaimed and successful Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers features new chapters on how stress affects sleep and addiction, as well as new insights into anxiety and personality disorder and the impact of spirituality on managing stress. As Sapolsky explains, most of us do not lie awake at night worrying about whether we have leprosy or malaria. Instead, the diseases we fear-and the ones that plague us now-are illnesses brought on by the slow accumulation of damage, such as heart disease and cancer. When we worry or experience stress, our body turns on the same physiological responses that an animal’s does, but we do not resolve conflict in the same way-through fighting or fleeing. Over time, this activation of a stress response makes us literally sick. Combining cutting-edge research with a healthy dose of good humor and practical advice, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers explains how prolonged stress causes or intensifies a range of physical and mental afflictions, including depression, ulcers, colitis, heart disease, and more. It also provides essential guidance to controlling our stress responses. This new edition promises to be the most comprehensive and engaging one yet.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Robert M. Sapolsky is one of the best science writers of our time.”―Oliver SacksFor the first edition of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: Sapolsky succeeds in interpreting technical material in a way that leaves readers with an understanding of how the same physiological responses, so well suited for dealing with short-term physical emergencies, can turn into potential disasters when chronically provoked for psychological or other reasons….The author has a way with words and images….you’ll find plenty to intrigue you. ―The Washington PostRobert Sapolsky wittily dissects the anatomy of human stress-response. ―The Wall Street Journal About the Author Robert M. Sapolsky is a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research, National Museum of Kenya. He is the author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, A Primate’s Memoir and The Trouble with Testosterone, which was a Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist. A regular contributor to Discover and The Sciences, and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, he lives in San Francisco. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Why Zebras Don’t Get UlcersThird EditionBy Sapolsky, Robert M.Owl BooksCopyright ©2004 Sapolsky, Robert M.All right reserved.ISBN: 0805073698From Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers:Regardless of how poorly we are getting along with a family member or how incensed we are about losing a parking spot, we rarely settle that sort of thing with a fistfight. Likewise, it is a rare event when we have to stalk and personally wrestle down our dinner. Essentially, we humans live well enough and long enough, and are smart enough, to generate all sorts of stressful events purely in our heads. How many hippos worry about whether Social Security is going to last as long as they will, or even what they are going to say on a first date? Viewed from the perspective of the evolution of the human kingdom, psychological stress is a recent invention. If someone has just signed the order to hire a hated rival after months of plotting and maneuvering, her physiological responses might be shockingly similar to those of a savanna baboon who has just lunged and slashed the face of a competitor. And if someone spends months on end twisting his innards in anxiety, anger, and tension over some emotional problem, this might very well lead to illness.Continues…Excerpted from Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Sapolsky, Robert M. Copyright ©2004 by Sapolsky, Robert M.. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐my take: (style influenced by the breathlessly wondrous Sapolsky)Yes, it’s all about the zebras, their lack of affinity for ulcers.Yes, the book is a truly amazing (amusing, exhausting) chronicle of social- / neuro- biology, what we have learned / surmised / imagined about the nervous system, its basic anatomy / physiology and the way stress affects it (as well as the rest of the body, social group, culture, world) both short and long term (talk about consequences!); the related manipulative / corrective strategies of pharma, physicians, general and psycho-neurologists, clinical psychologists, arm-chair psychologists, alpha-baboons (executives), sociologists, artists, partners, healers, rumor-mongers, and general purveyors of social capital; the sociology, changing views, solutions. Genetics: questions of cause / effect, relationships, heritability, the future re medicine / sociology / profits to made, heading off disasters of exuberant approach. Principles (“Homeostasis is about tinkering with this valve or that gizmo. Allostasis is about the brain coordinating body-wide changes, often including changes in behavior”). How all this resonates, from/through microscopic to footed-creatures, with a special fixation on humans. All that. Important, wonderful and often course-correcting stuff. (Source, myth, questions of how and why things get mangled.) Politics, geopolitics, (Biopolitics?) …. the idea (quaint, being that of one mid 19 C physician Rudolph Virchow) that “Medicine is social science, and politics nothing but medicine on a large scale… Physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor.” The factors / considerations about how poverty might affect all this, and the important (spun, remembered, neglected) corollaries of how attitude, social and personal, might (rich, poor) be surprisingly / cynically relative.All this. Delivered with humor and humility, questions ever begetting questions. (“Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.”)Sapolsky really is one of my heroes.But what I really learned from this book is exactly (especially the last paragraph) what I need to learn and apply. To ME. From his conclusion:+++++++++Sometimes, coping with stress consists of blowing down walls. But sometimes it consists of being a blade of grass, buffeted and bent by the wind but still standing when the wind is long gone. Stress is not everywhere. Every twinge of dysfunction in our bodies is not a manifestation of stress-related disease. It is true that the real world is full of bad things that we can finesse away by altering our outlook and psychological makeup, but it is also full of awful things that cannot be eliminated by a change in attitude, no matter how heroically, fervently, complexly, or ritualistically we may wish. Once we are actually sick with the illness, the fantasy of which keeps us anxiously awake at two in the morning, the things that will save us have little to do with the content of this book. Once we have that cardiac arrest, once a tumor has metastasized, once our brain has been badly deprived of oxygen, little about our psychological outlook is likely to help. We have entered the realm where someone else–a highly trained physician–must use the most high-tech of appropriate medical interventions.These caveats must be emphasized repeatedly in teaching what cures to seek and what attributions to make when confronted with many diseases. But amid this caution, there remains a whole realm of health and disease that is sensitive to the quality of our minds–our thoughts and emotions and behaviors. And sometimes whether or not we become sick with the diseases that frighten us at two in the morning will reflect this realm of the mind. It is here that we must turn from the physicians and their ability to clean up the mess afterward and recognize our own capacity to prevent some of these problems beforehand in the small steps with which we live our everyday lives.Perhaps I’m beginning to sound like your grandmother, advising you to be happy and not to worry so much. This advice may sound platitudinous, trivial, or both. But change the way even a rat perceives its world, and you dramatically alter the likelihood of its getting a disease. These ideas are no mere truisms. They are powerful, potentially liberating forces to be harnessed. As a physiologist who has studied stress for many years, I clearly see that the physiology of the system is often no more decisive than the psychology. We return to the catalogue at the beginning of the first chapter, the things we all find stressful–traffic jams, money worries, overwork, the anxieties of relationships. Few of them are “real” in the sense that that zebra or that lion would understand. In our privileged lives, we are uniquely smart enough to have invented these stressors and uniquely foolish enough to have let them, too often, dominate our lives. Surely we have the potential to be uniquely wise enough to banish their stressful hold.+++++++++It’s the wisdom of Sophocles: Bend, not break.

⭐Stress can take its toll on the human body. This isn’t a new idea- most everyone agrees that prolonged exposure to stressful situations can have negative impacts on overall health and well- being. Just how, exactly, does stress affect our bodies and is there a way to reduce its harm? These are subjects tackled in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.This book combines social science with traditional science to explain how stress impacts our lives. The book serves up a healthy dose of science as it explains the different body chemicals that are released in response to a stressful event. It explains what these different hormones do and offers up studies and evidence that show what can happen if stress isn’t brought under control.The title of this book is one that gets your attention and convinces many to read. It’s a metaphor that continues to pop up throughout the reading. It effectively drives home many of the books key points, using a zebra being pursued by a lion as its basis. The book serves up a healthy dose of humor, too, which helps keep things interesting and keeps your attention.As I read this book, I started thinking more than usual about my own levels of stress and whether I have been negatively affected by stress to a noticeable degree. I feel like I have stress under control, at least better than I used to. I don’t overreact to things like I once did and it’s a good thing I don’t. After reading this book and discovering what stress can do to you, I was tempted to quit my job, sell my urban home, and move to a secluded part of the country.Stress is detrimental and it is something we all need less of in our lives. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers is a highly useful book for understanding the science behind the stress and all the harm that stress can inflict. It’s a well- written book that explains the science with a dash of humor to keep it entertaining enough that you want to continue reading. I learned quite a bit and it has piqued my interest to continue pursuing more knowledge about stress and its impact on our bodies.

⭐I bought this on the back of watching Robert’s youtube talk on the same subject – hoping to learn more about stress. In my own work I support people with anxiety, depression and stress and was hopeful that this book would contain some useful psychoeducational materials as well as some ideas on stress management techniques I could implement. Whilst the book is a great educator on the nature and physiology of the stress response, and written in a humorous way, it doesn’t really contain any useful advice on how this can be translated into practical stress management. In fact there is only one short final chapter called ‘Managing Stress’ – but all it seems to say is that some people deal with it better than others, without giving any real direction how to improve our own stress resilience. All in all an interesting read from a scientific/psychological standpoint but of no real value to anyone looking for ways to manage their own stress.

⭐Stupendous book. Every human being in the western world, and certainly every politician, should be forced to read this book (or a simplified version for the less mentally agile!), as it explains why we are slowly killing ourselves with a combination of stress and unhealthy behaviours, especially around diet and exercise. The recurring theme is how the fight or flight response to long-lasting stressful situations (for which it was not “designed”, if designed it was) is now doing so much damage to 21st century human bodies and, by its effects on the HPA axis (cortisone etc), is creating virtually all the major illnesses from which we are either dying or ending up being a drain on our health care systems. It’s a very long book, and, to be honest, I haven’t finished it, as it is very hard going (but see below), but I know I must continue to read it, and read it again, as it is the most important and informative book I think I will ever read. I say it is hard going, but not only is Robert Sapolsky clearly a great scientist, he is also a very funny man who livens the text with entertaining anecdotes and self-deprecating comments. If you want a gentle way into the book search youtube for The Lion The Watch and The Hormones, a brief music video by Tom McFadden about the book, in which Robert Sapolsky himself makes what might be called a cameo role. Buy this book, read it and find out how to live longer.

⭐Though it came in excellent condition and speedy delivery, my comment is just for the author – the book itself is not worth buying, its quite pessimistic and talks about all the ways you can get sick from stress, which only resulted in me feeling ironically, more stressed!

⭐If you want an almost easy to read account of how the Stress Response proceeds through your body from the initial perception of an external stressor they don’t come better than this.Add on the detailed account of how short and long-term exposure to stress hormones impacts on the well-being of the major body systems and finally a brief introduction to ways to mitigate these effects and this book is worth every penny.

⭐An excellent book for those who want to understand the physiology of stress but not for the gerenal reader.

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