Psychology month!

Week 4, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Robert Sapolsky

Arguably not a psychology book, I couldn’t help myself. Dr. Sapolsky is a pre-eminent neuroendocrinologist whose research on stress has, since the 1990s, I think dominated the field of stress and trauma.

 Also, he’s extremely readable which tends to be an oft-touted gift in reviews of his work. Sapolsky is a charismatic, humorous guy and it shows in his writing style, even when he’s verbally beating you up about the misconceptions of dopamine over the last few decades.

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, of which I read it’s 3rd edition, was published originally in 1994 and has become a staple for anyone seriously studying stress and its affects on the body, mental health (which, yes, counts as part of your body), as well as the history of how the field of stress has developed through medicine over the last hundred years. Chock full of anecdotes about medical history, a remarkable breadth of knowledge on the subject, the book details what brought Sapolsky into the study of stress and what has, to the date of the most recent edition, been continually found and supported in the research.

Some people, me being one of them, find a lot of comfort understanding and also being able to explain mental health concerns from a medical standpoint. Some people will just not buy in to mindfulness or talk therapy seriously because they feel it’s a new science or there are too many elements of pseudoscience and that especially when dealing with mental illness, it’s easy for others to take advantage. That’s why I appreciate work like Sapolsky’s that provides so much empirical evidence that can be used to validate the importance of talk therapy, mindfulness, medicinal psychotropic therapies. It’s a huge boon to anyone to be able to understand their own bodies and brains better, but also to have that hammer in your back pocket of a wide history of medical research to support yourself as you navigate having a brain and other people who (yes, even that person) also have brains.