Chapter summaries from the book: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky. Only chapters that are required to be read (according to syllabus) will be included
Chapter 1: Why Don’t Zebras Get Ulcers?
This book is focused on stress, stress-related disease, and the mechanisms of coping with stress.
Our personalities, thoughts and feelings reflect and influence our bodies. Stress can make us sick: many of the damaging diseases of slow accumulation can be either caused
........Read moreChapter 2: Glands, Gooseflesh, and Hormones
The brain sends messages to your body through the nerves that branch from your brain down your spine and out to the periphery of your body.
Chapter 3: Stroke, Heart Attacks, and Voodoo Death
In moments of crisis, for example when you have to run very fast, you have to increase your cardiovascular output. This is done by:
Chapter 4: Liquidating your assets
In cases of crisis (e.g. running away from a lion), your cardiovascular system kicks into high gear and is delivering oxygen and energy to your exercising muscles.
Where does the extra energy come from?
Chapter 5: Ulcers, the Runs, and Hot Fudge Sundaes
Stress and food consumption
Chapter 8: Immunity, Stress, and Disease
Psychoneuroimmunologist: someone who studies the fact that what goes on in your head can affect how well your immune system functions
There is a strong link between the nervous system and the immune system
Chapter 13: Why is Psychological Stress Stressful?
Some psychological factors can trigger a stress-response on their own or make another stressor seem more stressful.
Outlet
Experiment of Jay Weiss: rats that are under stress who are given an outlet for their frustration are less
........Read moreChapter 15: Personality, Temperament, and Their Stress-Related Consequences
People differ in their ways of modulating stress-responses with psychological variables:
Chapter 17: A view from the bottom
Poor health can be caused by our bad living situations and our position in society (pollution, no heat in winter, overcrowded apartment etc.)
Once social groups in animals have been established, those who are lower ranking become more chronically stressed (in most
........Read moreChapter 18: Managing stress
Consider the physiological studies of people carrying out dangerous, stressful tasks (e.g. parachuting). The studies show the same pattern: most people have stress-responses but a subset is physiologically unflustered.
Questions of this chapter: Who makes up that subset that can cope? How do they do it?
........Read more
A collection of shared teaching materials concerning Health and mental well-being. Including some background documentation on (mental) health
missing chapters Naresh Sapkota contributed on 13-08-2021 07:08
thanks for your chapter summary but i could not find chap 6,7,9,10,11,12,14 and 16.where can i find it?
Missing chapters by Noa sanderP contributed on 17-08-2021 16:13
I discovered the missing chapters in a summary shared by Supporter Noa - Book Summary - Why zebras don’t get ulcers by Sapolsky (3rd edition). It has access level 'JoHo members' so if you are not yet a JoHo member you should first Join them to see the full summary
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