Dr Sapolsky Baboon

The author gives exemplary examples of the short term and long term effects of stress. The author goes on to state that the short term effect is beneficial but the long term is not. “Mild stress can be beneficial. It can help you

There were no families, no companions, no grooming, and no nests . There were only cold, hard steel bars and concrete and terror and loneliness that went on for so many years that most chimpanzees would sink into depression, eventually losing their minds . As a result of enduring the terror and pain of having their bodies routinely violated for experiments and the loneliness of their tiny steel and concrete prison cells, many chimpanzees bear lifelong emotional scars . Numerous studies have shown that even long after they’ve been retired from experimentation, many chimpanzees exhibit abnormal behavior indicative of depression and posttraumatic stress . They suffer from symptoms such as social withdrawal, anxiety, and loss of appetite . They pull out their own hair, bite themselves, and pace incessantly . when they were done testing on them they are locked up in cold bars and they are put in small

Humans frequently turn on the stress response that was intended to assist our survival in reaction to the everyday challenges we face. Professor Michael Marmot conducted a study in England of 28,000 people’s health over a course of 40 years. Each person was a British

Stress Is the body’s way of responding to the hectic lives most of us live, whether good or bad. The body releases chemicals into the bloodstream, which creates a rush of energy and strength If an individual is feeling stressed. This energy can prove useful if an individual is in physical danger. Because it enables a person’s survival instinct kicks in; it is often described as ‘fight or flight.’ In addition, stress can also have a negative effect on the body, for example: suffering from stress and leaving it unchecked can contribute to health problems, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes.

There are three different theories that are used when talking about how we react to stress through the physiological aspect or the psychological aspect. The first is part of the physiological aspect of stress called the Cannon Fight or Flight theory which was proposed in 1914. Fight or Flight response is a physiological stress response that evolved to help organisms to survive immediate danger. The theory states that when an organism, human being or animal, faces imminent danger (acute stressor) the body arouses quickly and is ready to act via two different systems. They are the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine system. The sympathetic nervous system stimulates the adrenal medulla which is part of the endocrine system and is the region that produces the hormones such as adrenaline and noradrenaline. These hormones increase heart rate, blood flow, and glucose levels to prepare the body for an emergency. This response from the body suggests that the body knows how to protect itself and reach homeostasis. These two systems work together to either fight against the danger or flight away from the danger. Lord, King and Pfister in 1976 studied the Fight or Flight response in animals through a very unethical study. They administered chemicals on male hooded Wistar rats which inhibited the neurotransmitters from functioning normally. This made it very difficult for the rats to escape an electric shock. The results of the study suggest that the Flight or Fight response

The human body reacts externally or internally in the way of physiological responses. When we experience one of these stressors the physiological responses job is to prepare the body to deal either by adapting to it or simply surviving it. This can promote a functional alteration in the organs normal function.

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers is a book about the physiology of stress. It gets into great detail about what exactly is going on inside the body during periods of high stress, and also what short and long term affects are caused by that stress. The first chapter give a brief description of each chapter in the rest of the book. Each subsequent chapter explains different stressors, levels of stress, and hormonal responses to stress. Many of the chapters also include research and discoveries on how stress affects the human body, many of which are somewhat recent discoveries, only occurring in the last one hundred years or so. Robert Sapolsky is able to explain to his readers much about the physiology of stress and how endocrinology plays the most

The National Geographic film, A Portrait of a Killer, examines the types of stress that living beings can endure, and how it can thus affect the rest of their bodies. Severe chronic stress can lead even lead to the destruction of brain cells. Dr. Robert Sapolsky is a neurobiologist of Stanford University who has been researching stress for over thirty years. In order to study stress and its implications upon nonhumans, he went to Africa to study baboons. This species has only three hours of stress caused by eating, and the rest of their daily routine is consumed by about nine hours of free time. Much like Western society, baboons socially stress out one another, as they have social hierarchies to regulate how them interact with one another.

The documentary, Stress, Portrait of a Killer, examined how stress is known to kill, yet humans still believe they are invincible. Dr. Robert Sapolsky studied primates in Africa in order to learn about what effects stress has on the body. Interestingly, he found that the baboons who were considered to have a higher rank actually had lower stress hormones in their blood. Conversely, the baboons who were considered to be low rankers actually had elevated stress hormones, increased heart rate, and a higher blood pressure—all of which lead to deteriorating health. Furthermore, the documentary uncovered that weigh and weight distribution is directly related to stress which is unfortunate because the more weight you gain, the more you stress! More

Those in charge had children and would be put in stressful situations if their children were being harmed. Sapolsky was able to measure the stress of the baboons by shooting darts in the male baboons and collecting a blood sample. Sapolsky was not going to measure the stress of the female baboons as a majority of the females were either pregnant, going to be pregnant, or nursing. After studying and analyzing the social life and position in the troop, Sapolsky analyzed the impact of stress on the non-human primate’s brain. In order to measure the stress of the baboons, Sapolsky would spend the day analyzing their behavior then would blow a dart into them and collect a blood sample. By shooting them with a dart and collecting a blood sample, the blood sample was able to analyze the symptoms of stress. The complex social hierarchy became obvious as the blood sample tied back to the study of Selye. Solomon and Uriah, two powering baboons that Sapolsky was monitoring, witnessed the change in the hierarchy between the two. Sapolsky witnessed Solomon being at the very top of the hierarchy and Uriah taking his place; Solomon was at the peak for years and remained alpha longer than he probably should have (Sapolsky 2001, 95). As Solomon began to weaken due to age, Uriah showed his dominance and successfully challenged and dominated the alpha which took Solomon down to ninth place in the ranking (Sapolsky 2001, 95). As Solomon dropped down the rankings, many of the

Primates have always been a fascination of author Robert Sapolsky who wrote an autobiography about a trip he took to Kenya as a research undergraduate student. Part 1 is named the adolescent years and talks about when Sapolsky first joined the baboon trip to Kenya. It introduces his research assignment, how stress affected a primates health, and the baboons he recorded his data from. Soloman was the alpha male and Leah was the alpha female. Devorah was the most eligible female in the group. Ruth, a lower-ranking baboon, who had difficulty finding a mate settled down with Joshua, another lower-ranking baboon. They soon had Obadiah. Uriah a large baboon who transferred into the group in the spring persisted a challenge against Soloman until he

In the book, A Primate 's Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among Baboons, by Robert Sapolsky is about bettering understanding the connection between animals, in this case baboons and humans. Most importantly what is the correlation if any, between the emotions and diseases of a baboon and human. Sapolsky, spent twenty years of his life studying how baboons act, react, and most importantly how they express themselves. Further understanding the relationships of baboons and how their hierarchy works, out in the wilderness. Throughout Sapolsky’s study we realize the many similarities between the baboon and humans, how we aren’t so different after all. Sapolsky, in A Primate’s Memoir, is trying to capture to the best of his

Stress has been part of the anthropologic psychological experience since the first humans walked the earth. The attacks of wild beasts or volcanos and earthquakes most likely produced in early man the psychosomatic sequelae of modern

“This video is about Robert Sapolsky explaining the psychology of stress. Sapolsky talks about how homeostasis means being in a homeostatic balance, meaning that your body temperate is regulated ideally to how it should be comfortably or how your glucose levels in the blood stream are ideally regulated to how it should be. Sapolsky also talks about how we humans have to understand as well as to expand homeostasis/homeostatic balance to a whole new level critically than if we were just a lion and a zebra. This is because, Sapolsky talks about how sometimes we humans can turn on the stress response due to a change in the homeostatic balance or how we humans can turn on the stress response because we feel like we are about to be stressed. Sapolsky

At one time or another, most people experience stress. The term stress has been used to describe a variety of negative feelings and reactions that accompany threatening or challenging situations. However, not all stress reactions are negative. A certain amount of stress is actually necessary for survival. For example, birth is one of the most stressful experiences of life. The high level of hormones released during birth, which are also involved in the stress response, are believed to prepare the newborn infant for adaptation to the challenges of life outside the womb. These biological responses to stress make the newborn more alert promoting the bonding process and, by extension, the child's physical survival.