Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping

by Robert M. Sapolsky

A large body of evidence suggests that stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions.

You have better things to do than digest breakfast when you are trying to avoid being someone’s lunch.

Whenever you inhale, you turn on the sympathetic nervous system slightly, minutely speeding up your heart. And when you exhale, the parasympathetic half turns on, activating your vagus nerve in order to slow things down (this is why many forms of meditation are built around extended exhalations).

Eventually, some folks in the field got tired of hearing him go on about the damn bacteria at meetings, decided to do some experiments to prove him wrong, and found that he was absolutely right.

Scientific discoveries in the name of spite are my fave

We readily think of stressors as consisting of various unpleasant things that can be done to an organism. Sometimes a stressor can be the failure to provide something essential, and the absence of touch is seemingly one of the most marked developmental stressors that we can suffer.

Reflecting the anthropological tunnel vision of the time, Landauer and Whiting only studied males.