Stress and Your Body

By: Robert Sapolsky, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Robert Sapolsky

Feeling stressed?

You're not alone. Stress is an inherent aspect of life that can have tremendous negative effects on your mental and physical health. This makes coping with stress a critical part of how well we live.

Once you understand the inner workings of your stress response system, you'll possess powerful knowledge that will help you understand and better deal with this common aspect of your busy life. Now, from one of the world's foremost researchers on stress and neurobiology, comes a fascinating series of 24 lectures that guide you through the psychological and psychosocial stress that is a central part of everyday life in Western society.

You'll learn how the stress-response system is actually a natural survival system-giving, for example, a zebra the best chance to escape from a pursuing lion - that can change from a safety mechanism into a real problem for our physical and mental well-being. You'll see it coming into play against situations it wasn't designed to combat, such as traffic, troublesome thoughts and memories, and concerns over the economy, environment, and international events. And you'll gain valuable insights into how and why stress can affect every part of your body-including your cardiovascular, digestive, and immune systems - and learn about its relationship to important disorders and behaviors, like depression, anxiety, and even addiction.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2010 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2010 The Great Courses

AMAZING LECTURER

The most important information you’ll ever need in life. I cannot wait to pass this information down to my future children.

Educational but gets dry

The enthusiasm of the speaker is amazing and fun to follow. Despite the draw to the reader the material is very textbook and if the subject isn't your focus in life it gets harder and harder to stick with all the medical speak. After about 1/2 the book I found myself skipping to chapters that I wanted to learn more about and skipping the rest. If it isn't appealing to you to learn about it will be very hard to grasp all the information given.

Life-changing

Just read/listen to it. We in the modern West are killing ourselves with our unthinking acceptance of the things uncovered in this book. Narrator is wise, sometimes funny, engaging and a player in this field. Listen to the book and heed its guidance.

Eye opener

very clear explanation of the effects of stress on the body. one will think twice before stressing with small challenges in life.

Story teller was the best part

The author/narrator is incredibly skilled at story telling & uses his skill to keep you attached to the all variations of stress information he gives you. Dutch hunger winter babies, primate hierarchy, lab rat studies. Highly recommended, oddly entertaining. His quote on dopamine/addiction, “If we were simply machines of homeostatic balance, the more we consumed the less we would need. And instead the more we consume the more we want. Whatever was exciting yesterday is what you expect today, and isn’t going to be enough tomorrow”. Muah (kisses fingers)