I just studied an amazing National Geographic special called “Killer Stress: Why Zebras Do Not Get Ulcers”. It’s definitely worth watching if you can find it. The show deals with they physical implications of stress on the human body by looking at how animals handle stress. The programme is founded on the work of Dr. Robert Sapolsky who is a Professor and researcher at Stanford University. He explains that in nature, stress happens for a good reason: to save an animal’s life.

Zebras and Stress

Doctor. Sapolsky first takes us thru zebras and how they deal with stress. In the wild, zebras get stressed essentially for one reason: a predator, such as a lion, is chasing them because it wants to kill them and eat them. In this case, stress is a nice thing, a good thing. It causes all the zebra’s resources to be channeled into one thing: keeping the zebra alive. What’s occuring internally is that the zebra is momentarily knocked out of homeostatic balance. The meaning of homeostasis is: balance or equilibrium, sometimes between the chemical environment of the body and the external environment. This suggests that the normal everyday working of the body stops, and anything that is not right away important to keeping the zebra alive is abruptly halted. When a lion is chasing you, it’s no time to ovulate! It's a time to run like hell and get away. So that the body is flooded with adrenaline and noradrenaline to help the zebra run faster and harder.

But the extraordinary thing about the zebra is what happens after the chase (if it is not eaten that is). It is going back to basics. All of its systems return to a homeostatic balance as if nothing has happened. Now it can ovulate and do all of the things that it has to do for the bulk of the time it’s alive. For a minute percentage of a zebra’s life is it essentially being chased by a lion. And when it's not being hunted, it just lets it all go. It doesn't sit there and dwell on the indisputable fact that a lion just chased it to make zebra meat of it. He doesn't keep talking to his friends about “what a close call” that was and how “he just can’t get over it.” And so the zebra isn't living in a state of chronic stress. It is aware of it’s surroundings, but it is not in a condition of stress unless a fast threat exists. There are no “perceived” or future threats it's stressed over. Seems like a perfectly natural and healthy way to live.

Humans and Stress

It appears that humans have a lot to assimilate from zebras when it comes to stress management. Sadly many people today live in a condition of protracted stress, regardless of the comparatively safe environments that many of us live in. We don't have to run from lions or stress about being crushed by a mammoth. And in the absence of real life threatening circumstances, we have created ways to stress ourselves. The body cannot differentiate between differing kinds of tensions, so whether our lives are in peril or we are just pissed off because somebody cut us off on the speedway and we're seething and yelling, the body interprets these things the same. And sadly for humans, we are not good at letting the strain go and returning to a typical state. We dwell on things. In fact , we dwell on things that have already occurred, and we dwell on things that can occur. Dwelling on things is some people's full-time job.

That suggests that frequently people are in a condition of repeated stress. And as we’ve learned, when we are stressed, our bodies ‘ chemical systems are off balance. One of the major systems that suffers is the immune response. And when the immune system is down, we get sick. Tomorrow we will rap more on the physical effects of stress on the human body and what can be done to help us lower stress.

Latisha Ronner has discovered that by reducing her stress and using organic skin care, she has gotten her healthy skin back.