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Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers is your ultimate guide to understanding stress and how it influences our bodies. If you spend your days plagued by stress and inner emotional turmoils, this summary is what you need; it will help you better understand what you are dealing with and how to turn stress from an enemy into a begrudging ally.
Stress is joined by pain, and many of us fear that faithful companion. However, this summary transmits the light of hope, stating that pain is an inevitable and necessary part of our experience as humans.
The book is written by an acclaimed American author and neuroendocrinology researcher Robert M. Sapolsky. It is as insightful, easy-to-understand, and engaging as deeply scientific and detail-heavy research can be.
“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.” 〜 Robert M. Sapolsky
Key points
1
Emotions can directly influence our physical well-being
Our bodies and the way they react to the most random factors are wonderfully unpredictable. Robert M. Sapolsky is convinced that there is some beauty to not knowing. We, humans, are bound to a life full of questions and very few answers. Thankfully, science always comes to save the day and answer the most pressing of queries. It is endlessly exciting, and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers is a testament to that.
Science provides us with some of the most elegant, stimulating puzzles that life has to offer. It throws some of the most provocative ideas into our arenas of moral debate. ~ Robert M. Sapolsky
Not so long ago, we used to think of bodily and heart matters as separate, never correlating the two. Our grandparents’ doctors would never have attributed a heart attack to stress or other emotional difficulties—everything was explained by biological factors only. A revolution in medicine completely changed the approaches toward diagnostics of the illnesses and diseases that bother us. Modern medicine considers the physical characteristics and various test results, and the workings of our very complex and only partially studied minds. Doctors and scientists now recognize the inextricable connections between the body, mind, emotions, and well-being.
Taking care of your body is not enough; you must also take care of your mind and emotional needs to stay healthy.
This summary explains how different animals and humans perceive stress, and yes, we, two-footed rulers of nature, have a bid to learn from all creatures, great and small. You will also brush up your knowledge on triggers and mechanisms of stress and how your body reacts to it. Having spent time with this summary, you should be empowered to realize that you can control the stress in your life. In a nutshell, experiencing stress does not make you condemned, and you even can make use of it.
2
Zebras know how to live in the moment, not anticipating future stress
Stress is one factor that has the most significant influence on the body; it can make us sick. This fact is probably not of the utmost surprise to you, but have you ever thought about what the notion of stress encompasses? What we define as stress or stressful is different from what a zebra would if one were to ask its opinion. When we think of stress, we think of deadlines, conflicts at work, financial worries, and other solely human grievances. To a zebra, stress is all about survival, starvation, predators, and grave injuries. This difference is why zebras are less prone to getting ulcers than humans are.
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3
Understanding how our bodies react to stress can help us take better care of ourselves
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Be mindful of the ways in which your heart is influenced by stress
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When it comes to scientific knowledge, always keep an open mind
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Pain is a vital part of human experience
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Experiment and find what helps you best to cope with stress
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