I actually took a brilliant psychology course on this topic called "Stress, Health, & Disease" that dove deep into the mechanisms of "modern" stress (i.e. sitting in awful traffic day after day creates the same physiological preparatory response that would have been induced by fleeing a predator or some other physical threat thousands of years ago).
Basically, we learned that while "Type A" personalities do have greater incidence of cardiac disease than general population, the ONLY characteristic that held true (controls, multiple multiple scientific studies) for being worse off health wise was hostility. So using your logic, Type A personalities who go-go-go through life without being hostile should have less physiological stress than average, while lower SES individuals may in fact be in poorer health due to lesser access to healthcare, on top of the day to day stress of barely making ends meet. Hope that helps to clear things up!
Ninja ETA: we used Sapolsky's Why zebras don't have ulcers in this class as a textbook!
The chapters are as follows:
Why Don't Zebras Get Ulcers?
Glands, Gooseflesh, and Hormones
Stroke, Heart Attack, and Voodoo Death
Stress, Metabolism, and Liquidating Your Assets
Ulcers, the Runs, and Hot Fudge Sundaes
Dwarfism and the Importance of Mothers
Sex and Reproduction
Immunity, Stress, and Disease
Stress and Pain
Stress and Memory
Stress and a Good Night's Sleep
Aging and Death
Why is Psychological Stress Stressful?
Stress and Depression
Personality, Temperament, and Their Stress-Related Consequences
Justice, Adrenaline Junkies, and Pleasure 17.The View From the Bottom
Managing Stress
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers is a book about anxiety and stress. Dr. Robert Sapolsky is a great author, he also wrote A Primate's Memoir (and others) which I very much recommend. I can write a review of that as well.
The overall theme of this book is stress as it relates to three things; our genetic makeup, our experiences, and how our brain manages stress. This is not a self-help book, this is a neuroscientist's understanding of stress in humans. The joke about zebras not getting ulcers is because stress does not cause ulcers, ulcers are caused by a bacterium Helicobacter pylori, but it can get much worse with stress. Dr. Sapolsky does a wonderful job of explaining all of this in a way that non-scientists can understand. He's actually very charming throughout the book and jokes around quite a bit.
This was an entertaining read about how our bodies deal with stress, how flight or fight works, and how self-help books frequently don't get things right when managing stress. Dr. Sapolsky uses a lot of fun metaphors and jokes to get you through a fairly dry topic which could get overwhelming. He also discusses how part of dealing with stress is learning to recognize it (which we can be surprisingly bad at) and then mitigating it before it becomes overwhelming or completely avoiding situations (when possible) you previously didn't realize were stressing you out.
Full disclosure, I listened to the audiobook version from Audible on my way to and from campus (I'm not a big music person, I like books and podcasts). The audiobook narrator caught the humorous tone of the book and did a great job of narrating if you're thinking about listening instead of reading. The audiobook came with a PDF file full of supplementary material.
This was an incredibly informative book. Well written and researched (his footnotes are out of this world), humorous, easy to read (listen to), I would recommend this to anyone interested in stress. 5/5 stars.
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