Guru Ratings
Robert Sapolsky
Meh.
Remember my ratings criteria. I’m not judging these gurus on “global” or moral values, but very specific criteria. Many of my favorite books would be rated “bad” by my criteria for self-help (probably, because they are not self-help books). My ratings don’t reflect how well an author met his own goals, but how well they met my criteria for useful, accurate self-help.
Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers (1994)
Why Zebras Don’t get Ulcers is too in-depth for most readers, and light on advice. It isn’t a self-help book, but it tells how stress works better than any book I know.
Why Can Stress Make You Sick?
First, notice that your body’s stress response is useful. Say you are attacked by a lion. Your heart rate and breathing rate increase, pulling energy from storage into use. Your senses sharpen. Pain dulls. Adrenaline pumps. For the moment, your memory improves. All these things help you to escape the lion.
But you probably haven’t been attacked by a lion recently. Instead, your worried thoughts tell your body to go into stress-response mode over relationships, money problems, job problems, and everyday needs.
You don’t even need to be under stress right now. You can go into stress-response mode over bad memories of the past, or when thinking about potential problems in the future.
Your body’s stress response is great for occasional problems. But it is inefficient and short-sighted. It wasn’t meant to be used all the time. The stress response works well in fight or flight, but it can be harmful if used too often.
Every year, the stress response kills salmon. Their stress hormones give them the energy to jump up 1,000 miles of a river to their breeding ground. Then they lay their eggs and die, their bodies spent.
It’s good that your heart rate increases during a stress response. That way, energy can be pulled from storage quickly, so you can escape the lion. But if blood is pumping that quickly through your veins all the time, your veins will scar and tear. Using your body’s stress response too often can cause cardiovascular problems.
For similar reasons, too much of the stress response can make you tired, weaken your long-term memory, and give you ulcers.
During the stress response, long-term projects are put on hold: growth, digestion, reproduction, the immune system, etc. So if you’re under stress too often when you are young, you won’t grow as tall as you would otherwise. And of course you see why you aren’t as interested in sex when under stress.
The big one is your immune system. That’s why you’re more likely to get sick if you’re stressed out too often. Your body doesn’t put as much energy into your immune system when it’s constantly enabling the stress response.
The Power of Thinking
So why don’t zebras get ulcers? Because they only use the stress response on occassion, when attacked or when they’re starving, for example. But we use it all the time because we think. We think about relationships, money, work, the past, and future concerns. Zebras don’t have the burden of advanced thought. Thought will help you prepare for the future better than a zebra, but it will also make you overuse your body’s stress response.
People respond differently to stress because they think differently. If you think tomorrow’s exam is no big deal, you won’t call upon the stress response. If you think tomorrow’s exam will decide the path of your life, your blood will start pumping faster.
Some people have a habit of not thinking catastrophic thoughts about small problems. This habit is called a personality. If you want to avoid ulcers and heart problems, you should develop the habit of not calling upon your stress response too often.
What to Do
Only the last chapter of Sapolsky’s book tells you what to do about stress. He says:
- Find an outlet for stress. It can be prayer, meditation, ballroom dancing, Mozart, or competetive sports. But don’t give others an ulcer to avoid one yourself.
- Hope for the best and let that hope dominate your thoughts.
- Find good, supportive friends.
- Change what you can. Accept what you can’t.
Other books have more useful advice. But Sapolsky didn’t intend to write a self-help book. He just wanted to explain how stress works. And he does a good job of that.