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Robert Sapolsky's Stress: Portrait Of A Killer

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Stress. It is one of the worlds biggest battles everyday, as we try to avoid it. Stress is a humans natural response but unlike animals, we humans are unable to turn it off. This keeps us swimming in a corrosive bath of hormones. As time goes on, the stress response is more damaging than the actual stressor itself. In the video, “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” Sapolsky hits many different subcategories all connected to stress on the flowchart of life. Control, ulcers, a hunch, body fat, aging, survival, ranking, and a remedy. Scientist Robert Sapolsky from Stanford University had a hunch that the stress levels in humans were based on hierarchy. He traveled to Africa to study the stress levels of baboons to compare them to humans. “The hunch” is the starting point of all investigations. The main idea of this video was to inform humans of something that goes unnoticed and overlooked: Stress can be lethal.
Faced with a predator versus prey situation, animals react with either a fight or flight response. The stress caused by this situation is called eustress, which is positive for your body. It is intense stress, but short-term. …show more content…

Many people have scars of war. “Scars” symbolize the after effect of a traumatic event in a persons life that they have most likely overcome. Even if so, it can still effect them later on in their life. Studies have shown that when you have been through a highly traumatic event during your lifetime, it can lead to high levels of stress. It is possible to occur even when your parents have gone through a traumatic experience. In the documentary, they showed that the children that were born during Holland's “hunger winter” were exposed to their parents stress while in their mothers womb. These children are now at a higher risk of getting a cardiovascular disease and are more responsive to stress than children who were born either before or after the famine of

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