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Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
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Product Description
Review
Preface
Why Don’t Zebras Get Ulcers?
Glands, Gooseflesh, and Hormones
Stroke, Heart Attacks, and Voodoo Death
Stress, Metabolism, and Liquidating Your Assets
Ulcers, the Runs, and Hot Fudge Sundaes
Dwarfism and the Importance of Mothers
Sex and Reproduction
Immunity, Stress, and Disease
Stress and Pain
Stress and Memory
Stress and a Good Night’s Sleep
Aging and Death
Why Is Psychological Stress Stressful?
Stress and Depression
Personality, Temperament, and Their Stress-Related Consequences
Junkies, Adrenaline Junkies, and Pleasure
The View from the Bottom
Managing Stress
Notes
Illustration Credits
Index
Book Description
Renowned primatologist Robert Sapolsky offers a completely revised and updated edition of his most popular work, with nearly 90,000 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.
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.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
It's two o'clock in the morning and you're lying in bed. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
It's two o'clock in the morning and you're lying in bed. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.7 out of 5 stars (53 customer reviews)
98 of 100 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Smart, witty, helpful, Sep 6 2004
By Denver C. - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Third Edition: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping - Now Revised and Updated (Paperback)
This book has helped me understand the science of stress and some unpleasant results that I've been experiencing. I'm someone who always wants to know WHY certain things are happening, and finds that helpful when figuring out how to fix them. I really like the author's tone: He's a scientist, but one with a great sense of humor and also a lot of compassion. This book, while not exactly New Agey/touchy-feely, is also not cold and clinical as it explains the biology behind stress and how it affects body and mind. Once you reach the point where you say, "OK, now I understand how stress is affecting me ... Now what do I DO about it?," you'll probably need resources other than this book. But if, like me, you like to start out with a good understanding of what the problem is, then this book is a great place to find that foundation.
50 of 51 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating tour of how stress impacts the body, Mar 17 2006
By Patrick D. Goonan "see profile for URL" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Third Edition: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping - Now Revised and Updated (Paperback)
This new edition of why Zebra's Don't Get Ulcers is extensively revised and exceeds earlier additions in terms of explaining the effects of stress on the body. This is a very detailed exploration, but well worth the sometimes difficult reading. If you don't have some sort of background in biology, you may find that you have to read it a bit more slowly.Sapolsky as always explains his topics very clearly and uses humor and good examples to illustrate important points. I particularly liked his analogy of two elephants on a teeter totter for the ways in which the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system can become imbalanced under chronic stress from being activated to frequently and where each is trying to compensate for the massive activation of the other in a vicious cycle.
Sapolosky also develops the implications of long term stress and explains the mechanisms involved in a lot of detail. He also explores how mechanisms that evolved to save our lives in actual life and death struggles can hurt us by being activated over things like traffic jams or missed deadlines.
An example that he uses in the book is that if you are a zebra with your guts dragging on the ground while you are being stocked by a predator, then maybe it's useful not to experience pain under stress. If you may not be alive in an hour, then shutting down long term building processes and depressing short term immunity makes sense as does a narrowing of the attention.
The author goes on to further explain in the example above that the real problem comes when the flight or fight response is triggered chronically and long term repair and important building projects like bolstering immunity are depressed for long periods of time. This example helped me to understand the logic of why our stress reactions work the way they do. The way I explained it was paraphrased from memory, but Sapolsky tells a story that makes sense and helps you to remember important points.
While I was reading this book, I could viscerally sense the kinds of things stress was doing to my body. The information and evidence presented here is very compelling. Sapolsky also looks at how stress is linked to cancer and other controversial topics. He sensitively explores all sides of the arguments and why direct causal links are so difficult to prove for things like cancer. On the other hand, he doesn't back off from looking at the implications of stress with respect to cancer or other difficult areas to research.
Sapolosky is not only a good scientist with excellent credentials, he is a very fine writer. I recommend this book without reservation to anyone who wants an in-depth knowledge of how stress affects the body.
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Phenominal, Mar 18 2006
By D. Teasley - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Third Edition: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping - Now Revised and Updated (Paperback)
From my background as a biologist, this book really covers the topic with strong support and detail. From my perspective as a reader, it's a true page-turner that doesn't just accomplish its point, but goes well beyond. Sapolsky brilliantly makes incredibly complex systems seem simple and mechanistic by breaking them into manageable pieces and using strong analogies, making a prior knowledge of neuroscience unecessary. Humorous, witty, and easy-to-understand, this book is a must for anyone remotely interested in the topic of stress!
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