Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Third Edition

With wit, graceful writing, and a sprinkling of Far Side cartoons, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers makes understanding the science of stress an adventure in discovery. "This book is a primer about stress, stress-related disease, and the mechanisms of coping with stress. How is it that our bodies can adapt to some stressful emergencies, while other ones make us sick? Why are some of us especially vulnerable to stress-related diseases, and what does that have to do with our personalities?"

Sapolsky, a Stanford University neuroscientist, explores stress's role in heart disease, diabetes, growth retardation, memory loss, and autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. He cites tantalizing studies of hyenas, baboons, and rodents, as well as of people of different cultures, to vividly make his points. And Sapolsky concludes with a hopeful chapter, titled "Managing Stress." Although he doesn't subscribe to the school of thought that hope cures all disease, Sapolsky highlights the studies that suggest we do have some control over stress-related ailments, based on how we perceive the stress and the kinds of social support we have.

Product Description
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.

Sapolsky has a true talent for simplifying the complex, without patronizing the reader or diluting the facts. Even with a few years of vet school behind me, I still found myself learning something from every page. Not only that, but I was looking forward to reading each page, wondering what hilarious story or anecdote would come next.

I wish I had read Dr. Sapolsky's work before I had taken first-year physiology. I would have been far better off.

[As a side note, I was touched by the dedication.]


A terrific primer on stress and it's effect on health.   December 6, 1998
39 out of 39 found this review helpful

Having sufferred a heart attack at age 50 in July 1998, I have been searching for solid credible information to explain the common question, "Why me?".

Sapolosky addressed all of my difficult questions and some that I hadn't thought of. His easy to read style and humourous personality makes his serious topic more appealing.

Cardiologists in my area do not accept stress as one of the major risk factors in heart disease. Having had virtually ongoing job stress and periodic family crises such depression, a brain tumour, job loss, involuntary job reassignments and now bonafide heart disease, it is my personal phsyican's opinion that "stress" is one of the major factors of heart disease and also plays a role in other serious diseases such as ulcers, colitis, memory, sex and aging and depression.

Saplolsky addresses the main questions and issues in a very readable and guides the reader to options and solutions for developing a personal action plan.

Highly recommended to spouses, supporters and people who are willing to acknowledge that stress might be a factor in their health.


Fascinating and disturbing   September 7, 2003
magellan (Santa Clara, CA)
62 out of 66 found this review helpful

Having just finished Robert Sapolsky's very funny A Baboon's Memoir, the funniest autobiography by a naturalist I've ever read, I thought I'd look up his other popular books, the other one being The Trouble with Testosterone. Sapolsky is considered the country's foremost authority on stress. I have some background in stress research myself, and once heard the originator of the stress concept and of stress research, the great Hans Selye, speak at a convention many years ago, who Sapolsky mentions in his books.

Most of us know we should do a better job of managing stress in our lives, including myself. This is the sort of book I plunge into with a combination of morbid fascination and hypochondriacal paranoia. This is because the book itself was rather stressful to read, since I found out in manifold and gory detail about all the damage I'd been doing to my brain and body with all those high-paying but high-stress jobs I've had all my life. Although I made good money, I found out that I'd probably aged myself about 10 years in the process. However, as I said, the book makes for fascinating if somewhat morbid reading. For those with the adrenal cojones to handle it, this is the best book on the nature of stress and its effects that I've read. It's more a book on the physiology of stress, and so there isn't much on practical coping strategies, so if you're interested in information on that, you'll have to look elsewhere.

That having been said, I thought I would mention the best strategy I've ever encountered, of which I'm sure Sapolsky would approve, since it's based on some sound research in the area, and relates to one of his main points. Sapolsky makes a convincing case that we evolved for a very different stress regimen than our current lives and civilization provides. Instead of occasionally facing serious, life-threatening situations as we did thousands or millions of years ago, such as a predator attack, our lives are now much safer but filled with many continual, reoccurring, constant, irritating, but lesser stressors that still build up over time, contributing to such problems as heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, and even muscular dystrophy. The psychological end result of this is that many people constantly fret and agonize about things until they're worried all the time, or it even generalizes into more serious free-floating anxiety and panic attacks.

Hence, it's been found that the best way to deal with one's concerns and anxieties is to attack the issue of them getting out of control to the point where they're weighing on your mind all of the time, using a sort of "containment strategy." The best way to deal with this is to set aside some time each day--10, 15, or 20 minutes at most--for worrying. In other words, set aside a dedicated worry period, where if you need to, go ahead and worry yourself sick about it. Then put it out of your mind and enjoy the rest of your day. Another important thing you can do is to not just worry about everything but to put some constructive thought into how to better deal with your problems. Sometimes you won't have a good idea about how to do that for a while, for days, maybe weeks, but don't let that get you down. Persist in your efforts until you succeed. Most of success in life is persistence--not talent or ability--as most successful people will tell you. :-)

The other principle I learned that was valuable in reducing stress was actually a Zen idea--the idea of living life in the present. According to this Zen principle, one should strive constantly to live in the present, in the present moment, and to enjoy that to its fullest. Otherwise, your other pressing concerns will weigh you down and you will never truly enjoy life to the fullest. There will always be something else on your mind. Someone who's always worried about their other concerns can't truly live in the present, and therefore will never truly enjoy or make the most of whatever activity they're engaged in. Part of their mind is always somewhere else. Therefore, strive to always live in the now, in the present moment.

The final important thing I'd like to pass on is about attitude. Realistically, life is never as bad as it seems to us during our darkest and most depressed moments--nor as wonderful as it seems during our happiest, most ecstatic moments. It's somewhere in between. The point here is that one should also cultivate the proper attitude--since that's often the only thing one has total control over in one's life. If you're the sort of person for whom even little things get you down--which is more of us than we would like to admit--then strive to be more objective. The little things can't really hurt you. They're just annoying psychologically because they bruise our egos a little bit. Save your emotional energy for the really big problems in your life, instead--because there will be more than enough of those. Cultivate a positive, upbeat attitude so that the little things are practically beneath your notice. Let them slide off you like water off a duck's back. This is also another important Zen principle--that too much ego impedes our progress in life.

Well, that was all by way of providing some practical advice for coping with stress in addition to all the scientific neurological and endocrinological information Sapolsky provides in his book. Good luck and happy stress-free reading and living!