By Bruce Barton
 Robert Sapolsky stresses the obstacles to a long, healthful life at last week’s Family & Children Services breakfast. |
Although you can’t blame stress for causing cancer, it can be a legitimate reason for nearly everything else going wrong with our bodies. That seemed to be the general point of Stanford biological sciences and neurology professor (and unofficial standup comedian) Robert M. Sapolsky.
The author of “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” (Owl Books, 2004) spoke May 3 at the third annual Circle of Support Breakfast benefit for Family & Children Services at the Crowne Plaza Cabaña Hotel in Palo Alto.
He told the packed audience: “We’re not like normal mammals. Normal mammals drink contaminated water and die from dehydration two days later. We live 75 years and our bodies go to hell on us. … We die of these utterly bizarre diseases.”
Our bodies strive for homeostasis, the ideal conditions under which the body operates. A stressor, such as anxiety about paying off that 30-year mortgage, gets the body knocked out of homeostatic balance, Sapolsky said.
Unlike the lion and the zebra, whose stressors come and go in an instant (the lion on a quick hunt, the zebra trying to avoid becoming the target of the lion’s quick hunt), human stressors are psychological and long-lasting.
“We turn on that same stress response as that lion and that zebra,” said Sapolsky, who is also a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research in Kenya. “But if you turn it on for too long, you’re going to get sick.”
The results are myriad problems ranging from heart disease and hypertension to memory loss and psychogenic dwarfism - a condition that plagued “Peter Pan” author J. M. Barrie, who was subjected to emotional abuse from a mother who ignored him while she grieved over the loss of his brother.
“Keep that in mind the next time you see Johnny Depp,” Sapolsky said, referring to the movie “Finding Neverland.”
Type A people, high-strung personalities Sapolsky described as “going berserk because they chose the wrong line in the supermarket,” are particularly at risk for heart disease.
The higher the stress, he said, the more force of blood flow through the vessels, wearing down the walls.
In attempting to answer his own question, “Why do some people die at 50 while others live to 85?” Sapolsky said, “Some people cope better than others.” Ways that people can cope with stress, he said, include having outlets for frustration, a sense of predictability and control, a strong circle of friends and the perception that life is improving.
Sapolsky appeared to surprise some in the audience by noting that stress has been shown not to cause cancer. He dismissed studies to the contrary as “bad medicine.”
Preceding Sapolsky’s talk was a tribute to Family & Children Services’ longtime contributor and fund-raiser Cynthia Fry Gunn, and a testimonial from a woman and her daughter who benefited from counseling at the 60-year-old non-profit human services agency.
The agency, which serves clients from San Mateo and Los Altos to San Jose, offers a wide range of programs, including affordable counseling, services for the deaf and hard of hearing, an employee assistance program with conflict mediation, a “Family & Schools Together” (FAST) program to help at-risk elementary and middle-school children, gay and lesbian services, and a “Ways To Work” program that provides low-interest loans to low-income families for educational or job-oriented purposes.
Family & Children Services provides two full-time therapists at Los Altos High School, serving approximately 20 students, in a special day program.
The organization, based in San Jose, serves approximately 8,000 children, teens and adults annually. Its mission is building “strong, safe and self-sufficient individuals, families and communities.”
“Family & Children Services was thrilled with the outpouring of support for Dr. Sapolsky, our esteemed honoree Cynthia Fry Gunn, and for our agency in general,” said Lani Dorff, director of development and marketing for the agency, referring to the May 3 breakfast. “It inspires us to continue our unwavering efforts to help those in our community in need.”
For more information, call (408) 292-9353 or visit www.fcservices.org.
