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What am I thinking about?

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Mortgage, debt, money pouring out...

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And I felt a lump ...I know cancer when I feel it.

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Where is she? What is she up to? Never calling, never saying a word...

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Stress.

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It is everyone's inferno,

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bedevilling our minds, igniting our nights,

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upending our equilibrium, but it hasn't
always been so.

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Once, its purpose was to save us.

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if you're a normal mammal, what stress
about

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is three minutes of screaming terror
on the savannah, after which it's either

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over with you or you are over with.

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But everything changed.

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What once helped us survive has now
become the scourge of our lives.

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And I just burst into tears, and wept, and wept.

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Today,

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scientific discoveries, in the field

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and in the lab,

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prove that stress is not a state of mind,
but something measurable

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and dangerous. This is not an abstract
concept. It's not something that

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maybe someday you should do something about.
You need to attend to it

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today. In some of the most unexpected
places,

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scientists are revealing just how lethal
stress can be.

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Chronic stress could do something as
unsubtle

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and grotesque as kill some of your
brain cells.

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The impact of stress can be found deep
within us, shrinking our brains,

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adding fat to our bellies, even
unraveling our chromosomes.

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This is real this is not just somebody

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whining.

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Stress... savior, tyrant, plague...

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its portrait revealed.

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This program was made possible by
contributions to your

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PBS station from viewers like you. Thank
you.

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All of us have a personal
relationship with stress,

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but few of us know how it operates
within us,

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or understand how the onslaught of the
modern world

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can stress us to the point of death.

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Fewer still know what we can do about
it.

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But over the last three decades, Stanford
University neurobiologist

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Robert Sapolsky, has been advancing our
understanding of stress,

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how it impacts our bodies, and how our social standing can make us more

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or less susceptible. Is the aggregate
bad news

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and more... Most of the time, you can find him teaching and researching in the

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high-achieving, high-stressed world of
brain science.

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The paper is this huge contrast between...

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class... But that's only part of his
story.

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For a few weeks every year or so,
Sapolsky shifts his lab to a place more

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than 9,000 miles away

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on the plaines of the Masai Mara Reserve,
in Kenya, East Africa.

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Robert Sapolsky first came to Africa
over 30 years ago on a hunch.

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He suspected he could find out more
about human stress and disease

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by looking at non-humans, and he knew

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just the non-humans.

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You live in a place like this, you are a
baboon, and you only have to spend about

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three hours a day getting your calories.

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And if you only have to work three hours
a day, you got nine hours of free time

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every day

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to devote to making somebody else just
miserable

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They're not being stressed by lions
chasing them all the time,

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they are being stressed by each other. They're
being stressed by social and

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psychological tumult

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invented by their own species. They are a perfect model for Westernized

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stress-related disease.

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To determine just what toll stress was
taking on their bodies,

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Sapolsky wanted to look inside these
wild baboons at the cellular level

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for the very first time. To do this

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he would have to take their blood in the
most unassuming way.

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Basically, what you're trying to do is anaesthetize a baboon,

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without him knowing it's coming.
Because you don't want to have any

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of this anticipatory stress,

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so you can't just, you know, get in your jeep
and chase the baboon up and down the field

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for three hours, and finally when he's
winded,

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dart him with an anesthetic.

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Now, the big advantages of a blow gun

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are that it's pretty much silent, and

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hasn't a whole lot of moving parts,
but the big drawback

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is that it doesn't go very far. So what you
spend just

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a bizarre amount of time doing, is
trying to figure out

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how to look nonchalant around a baboon.

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Got him... Time?

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Okay, he is wobbling now.

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Whoop, there he goes.

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From each baboon blood sample, Robert measured
levels of hormones central to the stress

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response.

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Well, to make sense of what's happening in
your body, you've got these

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two hormones that are the workhorses of the
whole stress response. One of them we all

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know

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adrenaline, American version, epinephrine,
the other is

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a less known hormone called
glucocorticoids that comes out of the adrenal gland

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along with adrenaline and these are
the two backbones of the stress response.

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That stress response

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and those two hormones are critical to
our survival.

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Because what stress is about is that somebody
is very intent on eating

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you, or you are very intent on eating
somebody, and there is immediate crisis

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going on.

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When you run for your life,

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basics are all that matter. Lungs work
overtime to pump mammoth quantities of

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oxygen into the bloodstream.

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The heart races to pump that oxygen
throughout the body

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so muscles respond instantly. You need
your blood pressure up to deliver that

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energy.

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You need to turn off anything that is not
essential... growth, reproduction, you know,

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you're running for your life this is no
time to ovulate,

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tissue repair, all that sort of thing... do
it later, if there is a later.

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When the zebra escapes, its stress
response shuts down.

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But human beings can't seem to find
their

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off switch. We turn on the exact same
stress response

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for purely psychological states... thinking
about

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the ozone layer, the taxes coming up,
mortality,

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30-year mortgages... we turn on the
same stress response and the key

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difference there is,

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we're not doing it for real
physiological reason and we're doing it

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non-stop.

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By not turning off the stress response
when reacting to life's traffic jams,

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we wallow in a corrosive bath of hormones.

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Even though it's not life or death,

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we hyperventilate, our hearts pound,

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muscles tense.

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Ironically, after a while the stress
response is more damaging than the

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stressor itself,

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because the stressor is some psychological
nonsense that you're falling for.

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No zebra on Earth, running for
its life, would understand why...

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fear of speaking in public

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would cause you to secrete the same
hormones that it's doing at that point

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to save its life.

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Stress is the the body's way of rising to
a challenge,

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whether the challenge is life-threatening,
trivial

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or fun. You get the right amount of stress and we
call it stimulation.

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The goal in life is not to get rid of stress,
the goal in life is to have the right

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type of stress,

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because when it is the right type, we love it.

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We jump out of our seats to experience it,
we pay good money to get stressed that way.

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It tends to be a moderate stressor, where you've
got a stressor that's transient... it's

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not for nothing roller coaster rides are not
three weeks long.

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And most of all, what they are about is that you
relinquish a little bit of control

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in a setting that overall feels safe.

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but in real life for so many of us
primates including Roberts baboons

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control is not an option. Here you have a
big male

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who loses a fight and chases a sub-adult

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who bites on a female who slaps a
juvenile that knocks an infant

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out of a tree, all in fifteen seconds

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you know in so far as a huge component of
stress is

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lack of control, lack of predictability
you're sitting there and just

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watching the zebra

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and somebody else is having a bad day and it is your rear-end that is going to get slashed

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some tremendously psychologically stressful for

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for the folks further down on the hierarchy. One of
Roberts

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early revelations was identifying the
link between stress

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and hierarchy in baboons. Some baboons troops are over 100 strong

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like us they have evolved large brains
to navigate the complexities of large

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societies

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survival here requires a kind of

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baboon political savvy with the most
cunning and aggressive males

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gaining top rank and all the perks,

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females for the choosing, all the food
they can eat

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and an endless retenue of willing
groomers. Every male knows where he

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stands in society

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who can torture him whom he can torture

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and who in turn the torturee can
torture

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Well it sound like a terrible thing to confess
after thirty years but

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I don't actually like baboons all that much and there
has been individual guys over the years

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that I absolutely love

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but they are these scheming, back-stabbing

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machiavellian bastards that hurt each
other

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so they're great for my science, I mean I'm
not out here to commune with them

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they're perfect for what I study. 
22 years ago

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at the age of 30 Sapolsky's landmark
research

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earned him the MacArthur Foundation's
Genius fellowship

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his early work

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measuring stress hormones from extracted
blood led to two remarkable discoveries

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a baboon's rank determine the level of
stress hormone in his system

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so if you're a dominant male you can
expect your stress hormones to be low

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and if you are submissive

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much higher, but there was an even
more revealing find

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in Sapolsky's sample of low rankers

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the have-nots had increased heart rates

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and higher blood pressure. This was the
first time

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anyone had linked stress to the
deteriorating health

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of a primate in the wild. Basically

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if you're a stressed, unhealthy
baboon in a typical troop

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high blood pressure. elevated levels of
stress hormones, you have an immune

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system that doesn't work as well

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your reproductive system is more
vulnerable to being knocked out of whack

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your brain chemistry is one that has
some similarity to what you see in

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clinically depressed humans

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and all that stuff those are not
predictors of a hale and hearty old age

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could this also be true for that

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other primate as Robert Sapolsky

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was monitoring stress in baboons
professor Sir Michael Marmot

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was leading a study in Great Britain they
tracked the health of more than

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28,000 people over the course of forty
years

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it was named for

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Whitehall, citadel of the British civil
service where every job is ranked in a

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precise hierarchy

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the perfect laboratory to determine
whether in humans

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there might be a link between rank and
stress

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I mean that's the thing about stress I
think you've got to look at it in both

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acute terms and chronic terms I think
I've been under chronic stress

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in this organization simply because I'm
a square peg in a round hole

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Kevin Brooks is a government lawyer, his
rank

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level 7 means he has little seniority in
his department

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he lives the life of a subordinate

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I think what I was most aware of at the
time was the workload and how

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I had most of it under control but one of my
cases wasn't

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wholly under control I let it slip
and it was a bit like

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being in a car hitting an
ice patch

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and skating but nonetheless I came in

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Monday morning and my immediate
manager

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let's call him Ben, then wants a word
with you, so we find a room

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he shuts the door, then he says you know what you have
done

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you know what happened while you were away we
couldn't find one of your files

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Do you know what that meant? He just gave me a

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good kicking, psychologically he did me over

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and at the end of it it was more threats. It was right
that's maybe a disciplinary matter

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so I left the room crossed over the
corridor to my own room

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and I just burst into tears and wept and
wept

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Sarah Woodall also works for the
government

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unlike Kevin she is a senior civil
servant

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there about a hundred and sixty people
reporting to me ultimately

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one way or another within the sector. I do

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really enjoy working with our service
it's quite a dynamic

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environment, it can be quite exciting

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I like working with lots of people

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I do really enjoy my job. Such
dramatically different reflections

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dramatize one of the most astounding
scientific findings in the Whitehall

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study

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firstly it showed that

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the lower you were in the hierarchy the
higher your risk of heart disease

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and other diseases, so people second from
the top

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had higher risk than those at the top
people third from the top

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
had a higher risk than those second from the top and
it ran

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
all the way from top to bottom. We are
dealing with people in stable jobs with

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
no industrial exposures

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and yet your position in the hierarchy

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
intimately related to your risk of disease

248
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and lenght of life. I've been very
lucky

249
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I have never experienced any problems with
my health

250
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
since I've been in the senior service I haven't had a day off

251
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
with ill health, I've been very
fortunate

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
In my own situation I think that my career is pretty much

253
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
tainted, is pretty much

254
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
arrested because I have had, for instance, for the
last three years at work I've been off

255
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
sick

256
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
for probably half that time. This
particular study is sort of the Rosetta

257
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Stone of a whole field because

258
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it's the British civil service system,
everybody's got the same medical care

259
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
everybody's got the same universal
health care system

260
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
just like the baboons all the baboons eat
the same thing, they have the same level

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of activity

262
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it's not the stuff that oh if you're a
low-ranking baboon you smoke to much and

263
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you drink too much and if you're a
low-ranking british civil service

264
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
guy you never go to the doctor and you
don't get preventive vaccines both of this

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
studies rule out all this confounds

266
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and they produce virtually identical
findings. On both sides of the primate

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
divide

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
there are soul wrenching stories and
life-threatening consequences

269
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
For every subordinate like Kevin

270
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
living a life of baboon uncertainty there
is an alpha

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
strutting his stuff, glorying in power

272
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
over someone else someone unsuspecting

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someone low ranking

274
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


275
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Got him.

276
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
12:46 do either of you see where the
dart is?

277
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Yes. Okay guys who do you think
is higher-ranking?

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Our guy... Yes.

279
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Much carefully make sure the other guy
doesn't hassle him.

280
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
this year Robert brought his family to
Africa

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
his wife neuropsychologist Lisa
Sapolsky

282
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
has also done extensive research with
baboons

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and for the first time they brought
along their kids

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Benjamin and Rachel. As asleep as he looks...

285
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


286
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
all the baboons are perfectly
willing to get very freaked out by

287
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a human coming over and touching one of 
these guys but cover him with a

288
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
burlap and he doesn't exist anymore

289
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
oh my God he's there, he's... not there
anymore

290
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
this is not quite like taking your kids to
work day

291
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but it's a pretty central feature of

292
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
who I am by now and who my wife and I
are

293
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and kids want to know where we came from

294
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and this is pretty fundamental. As in
previous seasons

295
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Robert measures how individuals at every
level of the baboon hierarchy

296
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
reacts to and recovers from stress

297
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So what we're doing it is, we're now going to
challenge the system

298
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
with increasing doses of epinephrine

299
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the baboon's response is immediately picked
up in its blood

300
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
vital signs that can be deep frozen in
perpetuity

301
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


302
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It's this storehouse of potential knowledge and I
got 30 years of those blood samples

303
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
frozen away at this point because

304
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you never know when some new hormone or some
new something or other pops up

305
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and that is the thing to look at and start pulling out this
samples back to when

306
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you know Jimmy Carter was
president. 150... 125...

307
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Anticipating the long reach of stress is
a recent idea,

308
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
for one when robert was Rachel's age,
scientists believed stress was the cause

309
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of only one major problem. This is a
picture of a major american

310
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
personnel problem... an ugly sore that
doctors call a peptic ulcer

311
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
eating away at the wall of a man's
stomach.

312
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Those stomach pains that you talk about,

313
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the gnawing, the burning, those are obvious symptoms of
gastric ulcer.

314
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Thirty years ago, what's the disease that
comes to everybody's mind when you

315
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
mention stress...

316
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it's ulcers, stress
and ulcers. And

317
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
this was the first stress related disease
discovered, in fact 70 years ago.

318
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
What I want you to do is to work on your attitude.

319
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
My attitude? That's right. Ulcers breed on the wrong kind of feelings.

320
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
You've got to be honest with yourself
about the way you feel about it.

321
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Finding a new doctor sounds like a better
answer to me.

322
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The connection between stress and

323
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
ulcers was mainstream medical gospel
until the early 1980s.

324
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Then Australian researchers identified a
bacteria

325
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
as the major cause of ulcers.

326
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And this overthrew the entire field, this was,

327
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it's got nothing to do with stress, it's
a bacterial disorder.

328
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And I'm willing to bet half the
gastroenterologists on Earth when they

329
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
heard about this, went out and celebrated
that night. This was, like, the greatest

330
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
news... never again were they going to have to sit
down their patients, and

331
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
make eye contact and ask them how is it going, so, anything stressful...

332
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it's got nothing to do with stress, it's a
bacterial disorder... So no longer would the

333
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
solution be stress management,

334
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
now it could be something as simple as a
pill.

335
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It was a major breakthrough. Stress
didn't cause ulcers.

336
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Case closed.

337
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But a few years later,

338
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the research took a new twist. Scientists
discovered that this

339
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
ulcer-causing bacteria wasn't unique... in
fact,

340
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
as much as two thirds of the world's
population has it.

341
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So why do only a fraction of these
people develop ulcers?

342
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Research revealed that when stressed,

343
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the body begins shutting down all
non-essential systems,

344
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
including the immune system. And it
became clear that,

345
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
if you shut down the immune system,
stomach bacteria

346
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
can run amok... Because what the stress
does,

347
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is wipe out the ability of your body to
begin to repair your stomach walls

348
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
when they start rotting away from this
bacteria... So stress

349
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
can cause ulcers by disrupting our
body's ability to heal itself.

350
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
If stress can undermine the immune
system,

351
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
what other havoc can it wreak? One
answer comes from a colony of captive

352
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
macaque monkeys

353
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
near Winston-Salem, North Carolina. People
think of stress as something that keeps

354
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
them up at night, or

355
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
something that makes them yell at their
kids.

356
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But, when you ask me, what is stress, I say

357
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
look at it, it's this huge plaque

358
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in this artery, that's what stress is.

359
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
For two decades doctor Carol Shively

360
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
has been studying the arteries of macaques.

361
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Like baboons and British Civil
Servants,

362
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
these primates organize themselves into
distinctly hierarchical groups,

363
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and subject one another to social stress.

364
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Stress hormones can trigger an intense
negative cardiovascular response,

365
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a pounding heart, at increased blood
pressure

366
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So if stress follows rank, would the
cardiovascular system of a high-ranking

367
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
macaque,

368
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
call him a primate CEO, be different from
his subordinate?

369
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


370
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
When Shively looked at the arteries of a
dominant monkey,

371
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
one with little history of stress, its
arteries were clean.

372
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But a subordinate monkey's arteries

373
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
told a grim tale... A subordinate artery

374
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
has lots more atherosclerosis build

375
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
up inside it than a dominant artery has.

376
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Stress, and the resulting flood of
hormones, had

377
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
increased blood pressure, damaging artery
walls,

378
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
making them repositories for plaque.

379
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So now, when you feel threatened, your arteries
don't expand,

380
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and your heart muscle doesn't get more blood, and that

381
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
can lead to a heart attack. This is not
an abstract concept, it's not something

382
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that

383
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
maybe someday you should do something
about, you need to attend to it

384
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
today, because it's affecting the way
your body functions,

385
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and a stress today will affect your
health tomorrow and for years to come.

386
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Social and psychological stress,

387
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
whether macaque, human, or baboon, can
clog our arteries,

388
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
restrict blood flow, jeopardize the
health of our heart...

389
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and that's just the beginning of
stress's

390
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
deadly curse.

391
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


392
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Robert's early research

393
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
demonstrated that stress can work on us
in an even more frightening way.

394
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Well, back when I was starting

395
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in this business what I wound up focusing
on was what

396
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
seemed an utterly implausible idea at
the time,

397
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
which was chronic stress and chronic
exposure to

398
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
glucocorticoids could do something as unsubtle
and grotesque as

399
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
kill some of your brain cells. As a PhD
candidate at Rockefeller University in

400
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the early 80s,

401
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Sapolsky collaborated with his mentor,
doctor Bruce McEwan,

402
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to follow the path of stress into the
brain. They subjected lab rats to chronic

403
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
stress,

404
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and then examined their brain cells. The
team made an astonishing find.

405
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
While the cells of normal rat brains
have extensive branches,

406
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
stressed rats brain cells were
dramatically smaller.

407
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And what was most interesting in many
ways was the part of the brain where this

408
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
was happening...

409
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the hippocampus. You take Intro Neurobiology
anytime for the last 5000 years and

410
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
what you learn is:

411
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
hippocampus is learning and memory.
Stress in these rats

412
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
shrank the part of their brain
responsible for memory.

413
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Stress affects memory in two ways.

414
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Chronic stress can actually change

415
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
brain circuits, so that we lose the
capacity

416
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to remember things as we need to. Very
severe

417
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
acute stress can have another effect,

418
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
which is often... we refer to as stress
makes you stupid,

419
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
which is making it impossible for you in,

420
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
over short periods of time to
remember things you know perfectly well.

421
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We all know that phenomenon, we all know
that one, from back when we stressed

422
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
ourselves by not getting any sleep at
all. And

423
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the next morning at nine o'clock, we
couldn't remember a single thing for

424
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that final exam.

425
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
You take a human and stress them
big-time, long time,

426
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and you're going to have a hippocampus that
pays the price as well. In addition to

427
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
undermining our health

428
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
stress can make us feel plain miserable

429
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Carol Shively set out to find out why

430
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
she began not with misery but with
pleasure

431
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Shively suspected that there was a link
between stress

432
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
pleasure and where we stand on the
social hierarchy

433
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
just like stress, pleasure is linked to
the chemistry of the brain

434
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
when a neurotransmitter called dopamine
is released in the brain

435
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it binds to receptors signaling pleasure

436
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Shively used a positron emission tomography scanner to
examine the brain of a non-stressed

437
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
primate

438
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
our primate CEO. What we see

439
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is that the brains of dominant monkeys
light up bright with lots of dopamine

440
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
binding

441
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in this area that is so important to
reward and feeling pleasure about life

442
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Shively then looked at the
subordinates brain.

443
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
What we discovered is that the brains of
the subordinate monkeys

444
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
are very dull because there's

445
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
much less receptor-binding going on in
this area.

446
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Why is that, what is it about this area
of the brain?

447
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
When you have less dopamine everything

448
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
around you that you would normally take
pleasure in, is less pleasurable. So the

449
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Sun doesn't shine so bright, the grass is
not so green,

450
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
food doesn't taste as good. It's because of
the way your brain is functioning that

451
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you're doing that, and your brain is functioning that
way because you are low

452
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
on the social status hierarchy. One
feature of low rank is being low

453
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
ranking

454
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the reality, an even stronger feature by
the time you get to humans, is

455
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
not just being low ranking or poor, it's feeling

456
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
low ranking or poor and one of the
best ways for society to make you feel

457
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
like one of the have-nots

458
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is to rub your nose over and over and
over again

459
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
with what you don't have. Richmond California

460
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a town where societies extremes can be
spotted right from your car

461
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
this is the regular commute of cardiologist Jeffrey Ritterman

462
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
You can learn a lot about the distress
and

463
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
health outcome just from the
neighborhoods you visit and

464
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in this neighborhood the life
expectancy is quite good and

465
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
most of the people are pretty healthy
and as we reach the top of the hill it

466
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
gets to be a little bit less

467
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
privileged and as we make this
transition

468
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the social status begins to drop

469
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and correspondingly in those areas

470
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the health outcome is much worse
and these people are not going to have

471
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the same life expectancy

472
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
as the people in that middle class
area we started in.

473
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
People are on guard, people are vigilant,
they are living a more stressful life

474
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
this is a community that produces high
stress hormones in people

475
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and overtime it takes its toll. One of
doctor Ritterman's

476
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
patient is 65-year-old Emanuel Johnson

477
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
his career is guidance counselor in one of
America's most dangerous neighborhoods

478
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
well last year actually I think we had forty seven
homicides

479
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in the last four days we had
11 shootings three deaths

480
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and nine times out of ten it's
going to be a relative

481
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
or someone I bet the kids know. For Emanuel
Johnson

482
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
there is a price for chronic exposure to
this stress

483
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
five years ago I had a heart attack I'm a
diabetic too. I have to work on it

484
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
constantly

485
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
because I've been in this business twenty
years, so just it's stressful

486
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
just working the job, so over the years
that, you know

487
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the cholesterol, the blood pressure, the sugar came on later

488
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but the stress was always in
before they came on

489
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Emanuel Johnson's body may be telling
yet another story of stress

490
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the Whitehall study in england

491
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
found an incredible link between stress,
your position in the social hierarchy

492
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and how you put on weight. So it may not
be just

493
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
putting on weight but also the
distribution

494
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of that weight and the distribution of that
weight

495
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
putting it on around the center is
related to position in the hierarchy

496
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and that in turn may be related to
chronic stress pathways.

497
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So we said, does that happen in monkeys

498
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
because they organize themselves in a
hierarchy too and it turns out that it

499
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
does.

500
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Subordinate monkeys are more likely to
have fat in their abdomen

501
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
then are dominant monkeys. I think the
most amazing

502
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
observation that

503
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I've made in my lab is this idea that
stress

504
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
could actually change the way you deposit fat
on your body

505
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to me that was a bizarre idea that you
could actually

506
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
alter the way fat is distributed

507
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Sapolsky, Shively and others think stress
could be a critical factor in the global

508
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
obesity epidemic

509
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Even worse fat brought on by stress

510
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is dangerous fat. You know that fat
carried on the trunk or actually

511
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
inside the abdomen is much worse for you
than fat carried elsewhere in the body

512
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it behaves differently, it
produces different kinds of

513
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
hormones and chemicals and has different
effects on your health

514
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
whatever it is that works

515
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
for an individual, they need to value

516
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
stress reduction. I think the problem in
our society is that we don't

517
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
value stress reduction we in fact value the opposite

518
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We admire the person who not only
multitasks and does two things at once

519
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but does five things at once. We
admire that person. How they manage that

520
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you know

521
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that's an incredibly stressful

522
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
way to live we have to change our values
and value people who understand

523
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a balanced and serene life.

524
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
One heartbreaking moment in history
reveals that stress may in fact

525
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
damage us long before we are even aware

526
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Holland late 1944

527
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a brutal winter and a merciless army of
occupation

528
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
conspire to starve a nation

529
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it is known as the Dutch hunger winter
for those who survive today

530
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
these are haunting memories.

531
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I had nothing. I could no longer feed my son.

532
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I was so sick.

533
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And then you have to take care of a child.

534
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I found that terrible.

535
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I went to the church at the Dam next to the palace,

536
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and asked the priest's wife if she would raise my child as long as the war took place.

537
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Because I can't do it anymore.

538
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
dutch researcher Tessa Roseboom had
heard many of those tragic memories

539
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
she and her team wanted to know if
there were any lingering effects

540
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Roseboom knew

541
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that our bodies respond to famine in
much the same way they respond to other

542
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
stressors

543
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
so she set out to see if the fetuses of

544
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
women pregnant during these arduous days
could possibly be affected by stress

545
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
because of meticulous record-keeping by
the Dutch

546
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Roseboom was able to identify over 2400
people

547
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
who could have been impacted. She and her
team

548
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
analyzed the data from those born during
and after the famine

549
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and came to a surprising conclusion. I
think that you could say that

550
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
these babies were exposed to stress

551
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in fetal life and they're still
suffering the consequences of that

552
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
now, sixty years later.

553
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Many of the Dutch hunger winter
children live today

554
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
all in their sixties many still bear the
scars of war

555
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we found that the babies who were conceived
during the famine

556
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
have an increased risk of cardiovascular
disease they have

557
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
more hypercholesterolemia they are

558
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
more responsive to stress and 
generally are in

559
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
poorer health than people who were born
before the famine

560
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
or conceived after it

561
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
researchers think that stress hormones
in a mother's blood

562
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
triggered a change in the nervous system
of the fetus as it struggled with

563
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
starvation

564
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
this was the fetuses first encounter
with stress

565
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
six decades later the bodies of these
Dutch hunger winter children

566
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
still haven't forgotten. What we now know
is that

567
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it's not just your fat cells that
wind up being vulnerable to build up

568
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
towards events like this, it's your brain
chemistry, it's your capacity to learn

569
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it's your capacity

570
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to respond to stress adaptively rather
than maladaptively

571
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
how readily you fall into depression, how
vulnerable you are to psychiatric

572
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
disorders

573
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
yet another realm in which early
experience and early stress can leave a very

574
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
very bad footprint. If I had had an

575
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
option I would not have opted to be

576
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
bipolar but now that I am bipolar

577
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I'll have to live with it. It's hard for me to be flexible.

578
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I am very quick to anger.

579
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


580
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
What the Dutch hunger winter phenomenon
is about is

581
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
experience, environments start long
before birth and adverse

582
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
stressful environments can imprint and leave scars

583
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
lasting a whole lifetime.

584
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


585
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


586
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We are taking

587
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
fingerprints because no baboon has the same fingerprints as another one.

588
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So we just took Gummibear's and I am hoping to get over to Riff and get his.

589
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
During this
years multi-generational research,

590
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Robert who has spent his career
documenting stresses effects on the

591
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
individual

592
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and on the cell tracks the trail of
stress even deeper into our bodies

593
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
One of the most interesting new direction in stress
research

594
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is taking the effects of stress down to
a bolts and nuts level

595
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
how cells work, how genes work, that half
a dozen years ago nobody could have

596
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
imagined.

597
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the once unimaginable genetic structures
called telomeres

598
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
which protect the ends of our chromosomes
from fraying

599
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
as we age our telomeres shorten. What is
interesting

600
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is stress, by way of stress hormones

601
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
can accelerate the shortening of
telomeres, so the assumption is for

602
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the exact same aged guys

603
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
if you're a low-ranking guy who's just
marinating in stress hormones

604
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
your telomeres are going to be shorter. So
how does this formidable finding apply

605
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to us

606
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
San Rafael California

607
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
once a week Janet Lawson keeps a very
important appointment.

608
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
She joined other mothers who share
circumstances that produce chronic

609
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
unremitting stress. So... but she looses her
balance and that's the scary part

610
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
so we just went out actually last night
and bought a new helmet just for fun

611
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
She's getting older and wanting more
independence, it's getting harder.

612
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Each of these women is mother to a
disabled child

613
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
For us my son's only 8 and and there's
enough I can handle and I don't allow

614
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
myself to go

615
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
too much out, i can't. I had a friend recently
who said to me

616
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you know I think you really should
consider putting Lexie at a home and

617
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that was really stressful in and of itself
to think

618
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
wahou so...

619
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
so it's like how can you

620
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
even say that? She is, you know a little
girlfriend

621
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
she's, even though she can't really
communicate

622
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
she loves

623
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
she loves

624
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
These remarkable women came to the
attention of biologist

625
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
doctor Elizabeth Blackburn. I didn't
directly know the individuals

626
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but I know the stories and I am a mother
myself and so when I heard about this

627
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
cohort

628
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I really thought it was worthwhile
finding out

629
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
what really is happening at the heart of
the cells in

630
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
these mothers who are doing such a difficult
thing for such a long time.

631
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Doctor Blackburn is a leader in the
field of telomere research.

632
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We have 46 chromosomes and they are capped off

633
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
at each end by telomeres. Nobody knew in
humans

634
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
wether telomeres and their fraying down over
life

635
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
would be affected by chronic stress, and
so,

636
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we decided we would look at this cohort
of

637
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
chronically stressed mothers. And we
decided to ask what's happening to their

638
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
telomeres and to the maintenance of their telomeres.

639
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
What we found was the length of the telomeres

640
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
directly relates to the amount of stress

641
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
somebody is under, and the number of years

642
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that they've been under the stress. Such
stressed mothers became the focus of a

643
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
study by doctor Blackburn's colleague,

644
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
psychologist Elissa Epel.

645
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Mothers of young children are a highly
stressed group.

646
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
They are often balancing competing demands
like work

647
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and child rearing, and often don't
have time to take care of themselves.

648
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, if you add on top of that, the extra
burden of caring

649
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
for a child with special needs, it can be
overwhelming.

650
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It can tax the very reserves that sustain
people,

651
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and if they're stressed, if they report
stress, they tend to die earlier.

652
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
These women have shortened telomeres,
decreased activity of this enzyme,

653
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and a very very rough number for every
year you were taking care of a chronically

654
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
ill child,

655
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you got roughly six years worth of aging.

656
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
This is real, this is not just somebody
whining...

657
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
this is real, medically serious

658
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
aging going on, and we can see that it is
actually caused

659
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
by the chronic stress.

660
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But there is hope. Doctor Blackburn co-discovered an

661
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
enzyme, telomerase, that can repair the
damage.

662
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It is what I always call the threat of hope... That's good. That's good... Yes.

663
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Preliminary data

664
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
suggests that a meeting of minds, such as
this, may actually have a health benefit,

665
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
by stimulating the healing effects
of telomerase.

666
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And laugh and laugh, if you
don't laugh, forget it, you can't handle it... It's...

667
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
What I found is that the humor is
something...

668
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
there's a certain level of black humor
that we have about our kids

669
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that only we appreciate, we're the only
ones who get the jokes, and

670
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in a way we are the only ones who are
allowed to laugh at the jokes.

671
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
One of the questions in the stress field is, you
know, what are the active ingredients

672
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that reduce stress and that promote
longevity?

673
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And compassion and and caring for others

674
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
maybe one of those most important
ingredients. So, those maybe the factors

675
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that promote longevity and increase telomerase,

676
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and keep our cells rejuvenating and
regenerating.

677
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So, perhaps connecting with and helping
others

678
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
can help us to mend ourselves, and maybe
even live longer,

679
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
healthier lives.

680
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Twenty years ago, Robert got a shocking
preview of this idea.

681
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The first troop he ever studied, the
baboons he felt closest to

682
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and had written books about, suffered a
calamity.

683
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It would have a profound effect on his
research.

684
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The Keekorok troop is the one
I started with thirty years ago,

685
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and they were your basic old baboon
troop at the time, and which means

686
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
males were aggressive, and society was
highly stratified, and

687
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
females took a lot of grief, in your
basic off the rack baboon troop.

688
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And then about, by now almost twenty
years ago

689
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
something horrific and scientifically
very interesting happened to that troop.

690
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The Keekorok troop took to foraging
for food in the garbage dump of a popular

691
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
tourist lodge.

692
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it was a fatal move. The trash
included meat

693
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
tainted with tuberculosis.

694
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The result was that nearly half the
males in the troop died.

695
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


696
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Not unreasonably, I got depressed as hell
and pretty damn angry about what

697
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
happened.

698
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
You know, when you are 30 years old, you can
afford to expend a lot of emotion on

699
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a baboon troop, and

700
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
there was a lot of emotion there.

701
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
For Robert, a decade of research appeared
to have been lost.

702
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But then he made a curious
observation

703
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
about who had died and who had survived.

704
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It wasn't random who died. In that troop,

705
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
if you were aggressive, and if you were
not particularly socially connected,

706
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
socially affiliative, you didn't spend your
time grooming and hanging out,

707
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
if you were that kind of male you died .

708
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Every alpha male was gone. The Keekorok troop

709
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
had been transformed. And what you were
left with was

710
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
twice as many females as males. And the
males who were remaining were,

711
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
you know, just to use scientific jargon, they
were good guys.

712
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
They were not aggressive jerks, they
were nice to the females, they were very

713
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
socially affiliative, it completely transformed
the atmosphere in the troop.

714
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
When male baboons reach adolescence,

715
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
they typically leave their home troop and roam,

716
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
eventually finding a new troop.

717
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And when new adolescent males would join the troop,
they'd come in just as jerky as any

718
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
adolescent males elsewhere on this
planet,

719
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and it would take them about six months to
learn... we're not like that in this troop.

720
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We don't do stuff like that. We're not
that aggressive. We spend more time

721
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
grooming each other. Males are calmer
with each other. You do not dump on a

722
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
female if you're in a bad mood.

723
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And it takes these new guys about six
months, and

724
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
they assimilate this style, and you have
baboon culture. And this particular troop

725
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
has a culture of

726
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of very low levels of aggression, and high
levels of social affiliation, they're

727
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
doing that twenty years later.

728
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And so the tragedy had provided
Robert with a fundamental lesson,

729
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
not just about cells, but how the

730
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
absence of stress could impact society.
Do these guys have the same problems

731
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
with high blood pressure?

732
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
No. Do these guys have the same
problems with brain chemistry related

733
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to anxiety stress hormone levels? Not at all.

734
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It's not just your rank,

735
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it is what your rank means in your society.
And the same is true for humans,

736
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
with only a slight variation. We belong
to multiple hierarchies,

737
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and you may have the worst job in your
corporation, and no autonomy and control

738
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and predictability,

739
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but you're the captain of the company
softball team that year.

740
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And you better bet you are going to have
all sorts of psychological means to

741
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
decide

742
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
it's just a job, 9 to 5, that's not what
the world is about, what the world is

743
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
about is

744
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
softball, I am the head of my team, people
look up to me

745
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and you come out of that deciding you are on top
of the hierarchy that matters to you.

746
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


747
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Well, that worked... and lots of baboon excrement.

748
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Which,

749
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
under the right circumstances, with the right
season's experiment is a gold mine.

750
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Unfortunately, this time around it is just

751
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a cage that I have to clean now.

752
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I am studying stress for thirty years
now, and I even

753
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
tell people how they should live differently, so presumably I should

754
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
have incorporated all of this, and the reality is,

755
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
like, I am unbelievably stressed, and type A, and

756
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
poorly coping, and why else would I
study the stuff 80 hours a week?

757
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
No doubt everything I advises could lose
all its credibility if i keel over dead

758
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
from a heart attack in my early 50s.

759
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I'm not good at dealing with
stress.

760
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
You know, one thing that works to my
advantage is I love my work and I love

761
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
every aspect of it, so that's good...

762
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Nonetheless, this is pretty clearly a
different place

763
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
than the savannah in East Africa.

764
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
You can do science here that's very
different and

765
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
more interesting in some ways, you can
have hot showers on a more regular basis

766
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
That is a more

767
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
interesting, varied world in lots of ways

768
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but there is a lot out there that you sure
miss.

769
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


770
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There is a pretty miraculous place, where

771
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
every meal tastes good, and your are

772
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
ten times more aware of every sensation.
This is a hard place to

773
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
come to year after year without getting,
I think, a very

774
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
different metabolism and temperament.

775
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I am more extroverted here, I am more,

776
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
more happy...

777
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It is a hard place not to be happy.

778
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


779
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So one

780
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
antidote to stress may be finding a place
where we have control

781
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but how do we reckon with all the time
we spend at work

782
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I would say what we've learned from

783
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the Whitehall study, from the studies of
non-human primates

784
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is the conditions in which people live
and work

785
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
are absolutely vital for the health

786
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Senior civil servant Sara Woodhall

787
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
enjoys the benefits of control. I
don't

788
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
think I suffer from stress I don't work
a 100 hours a week

789
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I control the amount of work that I do
to make sure that

790
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I can continue to deliver long-term

791
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Control... the amount of control is
intimately related

792
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to where you are in the occupational
hierarchy

793
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and what we have found is in general

794
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
people report to us that things have
got worse.

795
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
That the amount of work stress has gone
up.

796
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Their illness rates go up. Where people
report to us that they got more control

797
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
they're being treated more fairly at
work, there is more justice

798
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in the amount of treatment, so things
are getting better,

799
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the amount of illness goes down. I've
been very lucky I

800
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I have never experienced any problems with my health. But not everyone is so lucky.

801
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So is there a prescription for the vast
majority of us

802
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
who aren't at the top? Give people more
involvement in the work give them more say in

803
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
what they're doing

804
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
give them more reward for the amount of
efforts they put out

805
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and it might well be you have not just a
healthier workplace

806
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but a more productive workplace as well.

807
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I've managed to achieve a degree of
control

808
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
at the moment I'm in a very good
position this is the first time were I feel

809
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I have had

810
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a boss who appreciates me. He doesn't
dominate team meetings he sits back

811
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
he invites people to contribute, he lets
other people chair

812
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
He's a real manager and he, from the
start when I returned of my latest sick

813
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
leave just six months ago

814
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
he was so positive I think I feel
sufficiently

815
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
empowered

816
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Who would have imagined

817
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that Robert's baboons would point us
humans

818
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
towards a stress-free utopia. This may
sound

819
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a little fanciful but I think what we're
trying to create

820
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is a better society. The implications
both of the baboons

821
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and of the British civil services is how
can we create

822
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a society that has the conditions
that will allow people to flourish.

823
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And that's where this is heading to
create

824
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
a better society that promotes human
flourishing

825
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So what does the baboons teach the average
person in there

826
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
don't bite somebody because you're
having a bad day

827
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
don't just displace on them in any sort of
manner, social affiliation is a remarkably

828
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
powerful thing and

829
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that said by somebody who lives in a
world where ambition and drive and type A things

830
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and all of that sort of things
dominates

831
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
those things are really important and one
of the greatest forms of sociality

832
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is giving rather than receiving and

833
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
all those things make for a better world

834
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Another one of the things that baboons teach us

835
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is if they are able to, in one
generation transform what are supposed

836
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to be

837
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
textbooks social systems, sort of engraved in
stone,

838
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we don't have an excuse when we say
they're certain inevitabilities about

839
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
human social systems

840
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And so, the haunting question that
endures from Robert's life work

841
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
are we brave enough to learn from a
baboon?

842
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The Kikarak troop didn't just
survive without stress

843
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
they thrived.

844
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Can we?

845
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


846
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


847
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


848
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999


849
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999