WEBVTT 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What am I thinking about? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Mortgage, debt, money pouring out... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I felt a lump ...I know cancer when I feel it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Where is she? What is she up to? Never calling, never saying a word... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Stress. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It is everyone's inferno, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 bedevilling our minds, igniting our nights, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 upending our equilibrium, but it hasn't always been so. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Once, its purpose was to save us. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 if you're a normal mammal, what stress about 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is three minutes of screaming terror on the savannah, after which it's either 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 over with you or you are over with. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But everything changed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What once helped us survive has now become the scourge of our lives. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I just burst into tears, and wept, and wept. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Today, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 scientific discoveries, in the field 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and in the lab, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 prove that stress is not a state of mind, but something measurable 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and dangerous. This is not an abstract concept. It's not something that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 maybe someday you should do something about. You need to attend to it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 today. In some of the most unexpected places, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 scientists are revealing just how lethal stress can be. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Chronic stress could do something as unsubtle 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and grotesque as kill some of your brain cells. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The impact of stress can be found deep within us, shrinking our brains, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 adding fat to our bellies, even unraveling our chromosomes. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is real this is not just somebody 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 whining. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Stress... savior, tyrant, plague... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 its portrait revealed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This program was made possible by contributions to your 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 All of us have a personal relationship with stress, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but few of us know how it operates within us, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or understand how the onslaught of the modern world 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 can stress us to the point of death. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Fewer still know what we can do about it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But over the last three decades, Stanford University neurobiologist 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Robert Sapolsky, has been advancing our understanding of stress, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 how it impacts our bodies, and how our social standing can make us more 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or less susceptible. Is the aggregate bad news 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and more... Most of the time, you can find him teaching and researching in the 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 high-achieving, high-stressed world of brain science. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The paper is this huge contrast between... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 class... But that's only part of his story. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For a few weeks every year or so, Sapolsky shifts his lab to a place more 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 than 9,000 miles away 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 on the plaines of the Masai Mara Reserve, in Kenya, East Africa. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Robert Sapolsky first came to Africa over 30 years ago on a hunch. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He suspected he could find out more about human stress and disease 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 by looking at non-humans, and he knew 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 just the non-humans. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You live in a place like this, you are a baboon, and you only have to spend about 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 three hours a day getting your calories. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And if you only have to work three hours a day, you got nine hours of free time 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 every day 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to devote to making somebody else just miserable 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They're not being stressed by lions chasing them all the time, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they are being stressed by each other. They're being stressed by social and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 psychological tumult 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 invented by their own species. They are a perfect model for Westernized 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 stress-related disease. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 To determine just what toll stress was taking on their bodies, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Sapolsky wanted to look inside these wild baboons at the cellular level 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for the very first time. To do this 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 he would have to take their blood in the most unassuming way. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Basically, what you're trying to do is anaesthetize a baboon, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 without him knowing it's coming. Because you don't want to have any 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of this anticipatory stress, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so you can't just, you know, get in your jeep and chase the baboon up and down the field 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for three hours, and finally when he's winded, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 dart him with an anesthetic. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now, the big advantages of a blow gun 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 are that it's pretty much silent, and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 hasn't a whole lot of moving parts, but the big drawback 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is that it doesn't go very far. So what you spend just 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a bizarre amount of time doing, is trying to figure out 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 how to look nonchalant around a baboon. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Got him... Time? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Okay, he is wobbling now. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Whoop, there he goes. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 From each baboon blood sample, Robert measured levels of hormones central to the stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 response. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Well, to make sense of what's happening in your body, you've got these 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 two hormones that are the workhorses of the whole stress response. One of them we all 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 know 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 adrenaline, American version, epinephrine, the other is 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a less known hormone called glucocorticoids that comes out of the adrenal gland 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 along with adrenaline and these are the two backbones of the stress response. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That stress response 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and those two hormones are critical to our survival. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because what stress is about is that somebody is very intent on eating 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you, or you are very intent on eating somebody, and there is immediate crisis 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 going on. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When you run for your life, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 basics are all that matter. Lungs work overtime to pump mammoth quantities of 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 oxygen into the bloodstream. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The heart races to pump that oxygen throughout the body 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so muscles respond instantly. You need your blood pressure up to deliver that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 energy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You need to turn off anything that is not essential... growth, reproduction, you know, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you're running for your life this is no time to ovulate, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 tissue repair, all that sort of thing... do it later, if there is a later. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When the zebra escapes, its stress response shuts down. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But human beings can't seem to find their 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 off switch. We turn on the exact same stress response 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for purely psychological states... thinking about 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the ozone layer, the taxes coming up, mortality, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 30-year mortgages... we turn on the same stress response and the key 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 difference there is, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we're not doing it for real physiological reason and we're doing it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 non-stop. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 By not turning off the stress response when reacting to life's traffic jams, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we wallow in a corrosive bath of hormones. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Even though it's not life or death, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we hyperventilate, our hearts pound, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 muscles tense. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ironically, after a while the stress response is more damaging than the 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 stressor itself, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because the stressor is some psychological nonsense that you're falling for. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 No zebra on Earth, running for its life, would understand why... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 fear of speaking in public 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 would cause you to secrete the same hormones that it's doing at that point 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to save its life. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Stress is the the body's way of rising to a challenge, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 whether the challenge is life-threatening, trivial 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or fun. You get the right amount of stress and we call it stimulation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The goal in life is not to get rid of stress, the goal in life is to have the right 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 type of stress, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because when it is the right type, we love it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We jump out of our seats to experience it, we pay good money to get stressed that way. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It tends to be a moderate stressor, where you've got a stressor that's transient... it's 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 not for nothing roller coaster rides are not three weeks long. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And most of all, what they are about is that you relinquish a little bit of control 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in a setting that overall feels safe. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but in real life for so many of us primates including Roberts baboons 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 control is not an option. Here you have a big male 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 who loses a fight and chases a sub-adult 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 who bites on a female who slaps a juvenile that knocks an infant 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 out of a tree, all in fifteen seconds 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you know in so far as a huge component of stress is 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 lack of control, lack of predictability you're sitting there and just 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 watching the zebra 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and somebody else is having a bad day and it is your rear-end that is going to get slashed 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 some tremendously psychologically stressful for 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for the folks further down on the hierarchy. One of Roberts 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 early revelations was identifying the link between stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and hierarchy in baboons. Some baboons troops are over 100 strong 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 like us they have evolved large brains to navigate the complexities of large 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 societies 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 survival here requires a kind of 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 baboon political savvy with the most cunning and aggressive males 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 gaining top rank and all the perks, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 females for the choosing, all the food they can eat 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and an endless retenue of willing groomers. Every male knows where he 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 stands in society 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 who can torture him whom he can torture 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and who in turn the torturee can torture 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Well it sound like a terrible thing to confess after thirty years but 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I don't actually like baboons all that much and there has been individual guys over the years 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that I absolutely love 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but they are these scheming, back-stabbing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 machiavellian bastards that hurt each other 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so they're great for my science, I mean I'm not out here to commune with them 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they're perfect for what I study. 22 years ago 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 at the age of 30 Sapolsky's landmark research 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 earned him the MacArthur Foundation's Genius fellowship 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 his early work 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 measuring stress hormones from extracted blood led to two remarkable discoveries 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a baboon's rank determine the level of stress hormone in his system 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so if you're a dominant male you can expect your stress hormones to be low 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and if you are submissive 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 much higher, but there was an even more revealing find 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in Sapolsky's sample of low rankers 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the have-nots had increased heart rates 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and higher blood pressure. This was the first time 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 anyone had linked stress to the deteriorating health 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of a primate in the wild. Basically 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 if you're a stressed, unhealthy baboon in a typical troop 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 high blood pressure. elevated levels of stress hormones, you have an immune 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 system that doesn't work as well 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 your reproductive system is more vulnerable to being knocked out of whack 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 your brain chemistry is one that has some similarity to what you see in 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 clinically depressed humans 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and all that stuff those are not predictors of a hale and hearty old age 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 could this also be true for that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 other primate as Robert Sapolsky 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 was monitoring stress in baboons professor Sir Michael Marmot 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 was leading a study in Great Britain they tracked the health of more than 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 28,000 people over the course of forty years 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it was named for 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Whitehall, citadel of the British civil service where every job is ranked in a 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 precise hierarchy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the perfect laboratory to determine whether in humans 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there might be a link between rank and stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I mean that's the thing about stress I think you've got to look at it in both 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 acute terms and chronic terms I think I've been under chronic stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in this organization simply because I'm a square peg in a round hole 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Kevin Brooks is a government lawyer, his rank 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 level 7 means he has little seniority in his department 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 he lives the life of a subordinate 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I think what I was most aware of at the time was the workload and how 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I had most of it under control but one of my cases wasn't 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 wholly under control I let it slip and it was a bit like 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 being in a car hitting an ice patch 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and skating but nonetheless I came in 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Monday morning and my immediate manager 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 let's call him Ben, then wants a word with you, so we find a room 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 he shuts the door, then he says you know what you have done 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you know what happened while you were away we couldn't find one of your files 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Do you know what that meant? He just gave me a 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 good kicking, psychologically he did me over 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and at the end of it it was more threats. It was right that's maybe a disciplinary matter 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so I left the room crossed over the corridor to my own room 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and I just burst into tears and wept and wept 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Sarah Woodall also works for the government 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 unlike Kevin she is a senior civil servant 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there about a hundred and sixty people reporting to me ultimately 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 one way or another within the sector. I do 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 really enjoy working with our service it's quite a dynamic 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 environment, it can be quite exciting 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I like working with lots of people 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I do really enjoy my job. Such dramatically different reflections 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 dramatize one of the most astounding scientific findings in the Whitehall 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 study 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 firstly it showed that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the lower you were in the hierarchy the higher your risk of heart disease 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and other diseases, so people second from the top 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 had higher risk than those at the top people third from the top 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 had a higher risk than those second from the top and it ran 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 all the way from top to bottom. We are dealing with people in stable jobs with 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 no industrial exposures 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and yet your position in the hierarchy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 intimately related to your risk of disease 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and lenght of life. I've been very lucky 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I have never experienced any problems with my health 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 since I've been in the senior service I haven't had a day off 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with ill health, I've been very fortunate 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In my own situation I think that my career is pretty much 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 tainted, is pretty much 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 sick 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for probably half that time. This particular study is sort of the Rosetta 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Stone of a whole field because 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it's the British civil service system, everybody's got the same medical care 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 everybody's got the same universal health care system 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 just like the baboons all the baboons eat the same thing, they have the same level 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of activity 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you drink too much and if you're a low-ranking british civil service 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 studies rule out all this confounds 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they produce virtually identical findings. On both sides of the primate 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 divide 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there are soul wrenching stories and life-threatening consequences 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For every subordinate like Kevin 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 living a life of baboon uncertainty there is an alpha 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 strutting his stuff, glorying in power 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 over someone else someone unsuspecting 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 someone low ranking 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Got him. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 12:46 do either of you see where the dart is? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Yes. Okay guys who do you think is higher-ranking? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Our guy... Yes. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Much carefully make sure the other guy doesn't hassle him. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 this year Robert brought his family to Africa 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 his wife neuropsychologist Lisa Sapolsky 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 has also done extensive research with baboons 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and for the first time they brought along their kids 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Benjamin and Rachel. As asleep as he looks... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 all the baboons are perfectly willing to get very freaked out by 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a human coming over and touching one of these guys but cover him with a 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 burlap and he doesn't exist anymore 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 oh my God he's there, he's... not there anymore 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 this is not quite like taking your kids to work day 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but it's a pretty central feature of 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 who I am by now and who my wife and I are 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and kids want to know where we came from 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and this is pretty fundamental. As in previous seasons 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Robert measures how individuals at every level of the baboon hierarchy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 reacts to and recovers from stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So what we're doing it is, we're now going to challenge the system 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with increasing doses of epinephrine 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the baboon's response is immediately picked up in its blood 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 vital signs that can be deep frozen in perpetuity 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's this storehouse of potential knowledge and I got 30 years of those blood samples 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 frozen away at this point because 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you never know when some new hormone or some new something or other pops up 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you know Jimmy Carter was president. 150... 125... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Anticipating the long reach of stress is a recent idea, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for one when robert was Rachel's age, scientists believed stress was the cause 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of only one major problem. This is a picture of a major american 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 personnel problem... an ugly sore that doctors call a peptic ulcer 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 eating away at the wall of a man's stomach. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Those stomach pains that you talk about, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the gnawing, the burning, those are obvious symptoms of gastric ulcer. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Thirty years ago, what's the disease that comes to everybody's mind when you 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 mention stress... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it's ulcers, stress and ulcers. And 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 this was the first stress related disease discovered, in fact 70 years ago. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What I want you to do is to work on your attitude. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 My attitude? That's right. Ulcers breed on the wrong kind of feelings. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You've got to be honest with yourself about the way you feel about it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Finding a new doctor sounds like a better answer to me. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The connection between stress and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 ulcers was mainstream medical gospel until the early 1980s. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Then Australian researchers identified a bacteria 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 as the major cause of ulcers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And this overthrew the entire field, this was, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it's got nothing to do with stress, it's a bacterial disorder. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I'm willing to bet half the gastroenterologists on Earth when they 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 heard about this, went out and celebrated that night. This was, like, the greatest 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 news... never again were they going to have to sit down their patients, and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 make eye contact and ask them how is it going, so, anything stressful... 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 solution be stress management, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 now it could be something as simple as a pill. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It was a major breakthrough. Stress didn't cause ulcers. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Case closed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But a few years later, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the research took a new twist. Scientists discovered that this 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 ulcer-causing bacteria wasn't unique... in fact, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 as much as two thirds of the world's population has it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So why do only a fraction of these people develop ulcers? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Research revealed that when stressed, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the body begins shutting down all non-essential systems, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 including the immune system. And it became clear that, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 if you shut down the immune system, stomach bacteria 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 can run amok... Because what the stress does, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is wipe out the ability of your body to begin to repair your stomach walls 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 when they start rotting away from this bacteria... So stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 can cause ulcers by disrupting our body's ability to heal itself. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If stress can undermine the immune system, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 what other havoc can it wreak? One answer comes from a colony of captive 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 macaque monkeys 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 near Winston-Salem, North Carolina. People think of stress as something that keeps 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 them up at night, or 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 something that makes them yell at their kids. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But, when you ask me, what is stress, I say 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 look at it, it's this huge plaque 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in this artery, that's what stress is. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For two decades doctor Carol Shively 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 has been studying the arteries of macaques. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Like baboons and British Civil Servants, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 these primates organize themselves into distinctly hierarchical groups, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and subject one another to social stress. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Stress hormones can trigger an intense negative cardiovascular response, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a pounding heart, at increased blood pressure 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So if stress follows rank, would the cardiovascular system of a high-ranking 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 macaque, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 call him a primate CEO, be different from his subordinate? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When Shively looked at the arteries of a dominant monkey, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 one with little history of stress, its arteries were clean. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But a subordinate monkey's arteries 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 told a grim tale... A subordinate artery 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 has lots more atherosclerosis build 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 up inside it than a dominant artery has. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Stress, and the resulting flood of hormones, had 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 increased blood pressure, damaging artery walls, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 making them repositories for plaque. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So now, when you feel threatened, your arteries don't expand, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and your heart muscle doesn't get more blood, and that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 can lead to a heart attack. This is not an abstract concept, it's not something 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 maybe someday you should do something about, you need to attend to it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 today, because it's affecting the way your body functions, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and a stress today will affect your health tomorrow and for years to come. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Social and psychological stress, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 whether macaque, human, or baboon, can clog our arteries, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 restrict blood flow, jeopardize the health of our heart... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and that's just the beginning of stress's 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 deadly curse. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Robert's early research 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 demonstrated that stress can work on us in an even more frightening way. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Well, back when I was starting 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in this business what I wound up focusing on was what 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 seemed an utterly implausible idea at the time, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which was chronic stress and chronic exposure to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 glucocorticoids could do something as unsubtle and grotesque as 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 kill some of your brain cells. As a PhD candidate at Rockefeller University in 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the early 80s, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Sapolsky collaborated with his mentor, doctor Bruce McEwan, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to follow the path of stress into the brain. They subjected lab rats to chronic 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 stress, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and then examined their brain cells. The team made an astonishing find. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 While the cells of normal rat brains have extensive branches, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 stressed rats brain cells were dramatically smaller. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And what was most interesting in many ways was the part of the brain where this 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 was happening... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the hippocampus. You take Intro Neurobiology anytime for the last 5000 years and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 what you learn is: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 hippocampus is learning and memory. Stress in these rats 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 shrank the part of their brain responsible for memory. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Stress affects memory in two ways. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Chronic stress can actually change 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 brain circuits, so that we lose the capacity 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to remember things as we need to. Very severe 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 acute stress can have another effect, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which is often... we refer to as stress makes you stupid, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which is making it impossible for you in, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 over short periods of time to remember things you know perfectly well. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We all know that phenomenon, we all know that one, from back when we stressed 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 ourselves by not getting any sleep at all. And 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the next morning at nine o'clock, we couldn't remember a single thing for 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that final exam. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You take a human and stress them big-time, long time, 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 undermining our health 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 stress can make us feel plain miserable 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Carol Shively set out to find out why 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 she began not with misery but with pleasure 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Shively suspected that there was a link between stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 pleasure and where we stand on the social hierarchy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 just like stress, pleasure is linked to the chemistry of the brain 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 when a neurotransmitter called dopamine is released in the brain 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it binds to receptors signaling pleasure 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Shively used a positron emission tomography scanner to examine the brain of a non-stressed 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 primate 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 our primate CEO. What we see 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is that the brains of dominant monkeys light up bright with lots of dopamine 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 binding 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in this area that is so important to reward and feeling pleasure about life 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Shively then looked at the subordinates brain. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What we discovered is that the brains of the subordinate monkeys 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 are very dull because there's 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 much less receptor-binding going on in this area. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Why is that, what is it about this area of the brain? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When you have less dopamine everything 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 around you that you would normally take pleasure in, is less pleasurable. So the 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Sun doesn't shine so bright, the grass is not so green, 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you're doing that, and your brain is functioning that way because you are low 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 on the social status hierarchy. One feature of low rank is being low 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 ranking 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the reality, an even stronger feature by the time you get to humans, is 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 not just being low ranking or poor, it's feeling 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 low ranking or poor and one of the best ways for society to make you feel 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 like one of the have-nots 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is to rub your nose over and over and over again 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with what you don't have. Richmond California 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a town where societies extremes can be spotted right from your car 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 this is the regular commute of cardiologist Jeffrey Ritterman 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You can learn a lot about the distress and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 health outcome just from the neighborhoods you visit and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in this neighborhood the life expectancy is quite good and 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 gets to be a little bit less 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 privileged and as we make this transition 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the social status begins to drop 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and correspondingly in those areas 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the health outcome is much worse and these people are not going to have 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the same life expectancy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 as the people in that middle class area we started in. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 People are on guard, people are vigilant, they are living a more stressful life 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 this is a community that produces high stress hormones in people 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and overtime it takes its toll. One of doctor Ritterman's 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 patient is 65-year-old Emanuel Johnson 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 his career is guidance counselor in one of America's most dangerous neighborhoods 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 well last year actually I think we had forty seven homicides 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in the last four days we had 11 shootings three deaths 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and nine times out of ten it's going to be a relative 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or someone I bet the kids know. For Emanuel Johnson 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there is a price for chronic exposure to this stress 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 constantly 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because I've been in this business twenty years, so just it's stressful 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 just working the job, so over the years that, you know 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the cholesterol, the blood pressure, the sugar came on later 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but the stress was always in before they came on 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Emanuel Johnson's body may be telling yet another story of stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the Whitehall study in england 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 found an incredible link between stress, your position in the social hierarchy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and how you put on weight. So it may not be just 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 putting on weight but also the distribution 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of that weight and the distribution of that weight 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 putting it on around the center is related to position in the hierarchy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and that in turn may be related to chronic stress pathways. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So we said, does that happen in monkeys 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because they organize themselves in a hierarchy too and it turns out that it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 does. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Subordinate monkeys are more likely to have fat in their abdomen 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 then are dominant monkeys. I think the most amazing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 observation that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I've made in my lab is this idea that stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 could actually change the way you deposit fat on your body 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to me that was a bizarre idea that you could actually 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 alter the way fat is distributed 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Sapolsky, Shively and others think stress could be a critical factor in the global 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 obesity epidemic 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Even worse fat brought on by stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is dangerous fat. You know that fat carried on the trunk or actually 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 inside the abdomen is much worse for you than fat carried elsewhere in the body 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it behaves differently, it produces different kinds of 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 hormones and chemicals and has different effects on your health 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 whatever it is that works 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for an individual, they need to value 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 stress reduction. I think the problem in our society is that we don't 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 value stress reduction we in fact value the opposite 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We admire the person who not only multitasks and does two things at once 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but does five things at once. We admire that person. How they manage that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you know 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that's an incredibly stressful 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 way to live we have to change our values and value people who understand 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a balanced and serene life. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 One heartbreaking moment in history reveals that stress may in fact 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 damage us long before we are even aware 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Holland late 1944 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a brutal winter and a merciless army of occupation 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 conspire to starve a nation 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it is known as the Dutch hunger winter for those who survive today 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 these are haunting memories. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I had nothing. I could no longer feed my son. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I was so sick. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And then you have to take care of a child. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I found that terrible. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I went to the church at the Dam next to the palace, 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. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because I can't do it anymore. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 dutch researcher Tessa Roseboom had heard many of those tragic memories 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 she and her team wanted to know if there were any lingering effects 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Roseboom knew 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that our bodies respond to famine in much the same way they respond to other 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 stressors 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so she set out to see if the fetuses of 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 women pregnant during these arduous days could possibly be affected by stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because of meticulous record-keeping by the Dutch 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Roseboom was able to identify over 2400 people 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 who could have been impacted. She and her team 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 analyzed the data from those born during and after the famine 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and came to a surprising conclusion. I think that you could say that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 these babies were exposed to stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in fetal life and they're still suffering the consequences of that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 now, sixty years later. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Many of the Dutch hunger winter children live today 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 all in their sixties many still bear the scars of war 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we found that the babies who were conceived during the famine 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease they have 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 more hypercholesterolemia they are 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 more responsive to stress and generally are in 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 poorer health than people who were born before the famine 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or conceived after it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 researchers think that stress hormones in a mother's blood 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 triggered a change in the nervous system of the fetus as it struggled with 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 starvation 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 this was the fetuses first encounter with stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 six decades later the bodies of these Dutch hunger winter children 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 still haven't forgotten. What we now know is that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it's not just your fat cells that wind up being vulnerable to build up 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 towards events like this, it's your brain chemistry, it's your capacity to learn 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it's your capacity 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to respond to stress adaptively rather than maladaptively 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 how readily you fall into depression, how vulnerable you are to psychiatric 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 disorders 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 yet another realm in which early experience and early stress can leave a very 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 very bad footprint. If I had had an 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 option I would not have opted to be 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 bipolar but now that I am bipolar 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'll have to live with it. It's hard for me to be flexible. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I am very quick to anger. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What the Dutch hunger winter phenomenon is about is 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 experience, environments start long before birth and adverse 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 stressful environments can imprint and leave scars 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 lasting a whole lifetime. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We are taking 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 fingerprints because no baboon has the same fingerprints as another one. 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. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 During this years multi-generational research, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Robert who has spent his career documenting stresses effects on the 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 individual 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and on the cell tracks the trail of stress even deeper into our bodies 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 One of the most interesting new direction in stress research 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is taking the effects of stress down to a bolts and nuts level 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 how cells work, how genes work, that half a dozen years ago nobody could have 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 imagined. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the once unimaginable genetic structures called telomeres 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which protect the ends of our chromosomes from fraying 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 as we age our telomeres shorten. What is interesting 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is stress, by way of stress hormones 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 can accelerate the shortening of telomeres, so the assumption is for 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the exact same aged guys 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 if you're a low-ranking guy who's just marinating in stress hormones 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 your telomeres are going to be shorter. So how does this formidable finding apply 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to us 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 San Rafael California 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 once a week Janet Lawson keeps a very important appointment. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 She joined other mothers who share circumstances that produce chronic 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 unremitting stress. So... but she looses her balance and that's the scary part 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so we just went out actually last night and bought a new helmet just for fun 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 She's getting older and wanting more independence, it's getting harder. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Each of these women is mother to a disabled child 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 myself to go 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 too much out, i can't. I had a friend recently who said to me 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you know I think you really should consider putting Lexie at a home and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that was really stressful in and of itself to think 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 wahou so... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so it's like how can you 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 even say that? She is, you know a little girlfriend 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 she's, even though she can't really communicate 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 she loves 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 she loves 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 These remarkable women came to the attention of biologist 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 doctor Elizabeth Blackburn. I didn't directly know the individuals 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 cohort 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I really thought it was worthwhile finding out 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 what really is happening at the heart of the cells in 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 these mothers who are doing such a difficult thing for such a long time. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Doctor Blackburn is a leader in the field of telomere research. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We have 46 chromosomes and they are capped off 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 at each end by telomeres. Nobody knew in humans 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 wether telomeres and their fraying down over life 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 would be affected by chronic stress, and so, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we decided we would look at this cohort of 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 chronically stressed mothers. And we decided to ask what's happening to their 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 telomeres and to the maintenance of their telomeres. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What we found was the length of the telomeres 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 directly relates to the amount of stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 somebody is under, and the number of years 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that they've been under the stress. Such stressed mothers became the focus of a 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 study by doctor Blackburn's colleague, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 psychologist Elissa Epel. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Mothers of young children are a highly stressed group. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They are often balancing competing demands like work 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and child rearing, and often don't have time to take care of themselves. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, if you add on top of that, the extra burden of caring 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for a child with special needs, it can be overwhelming. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It can tax the very reserves that sustain people, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and if they're stressed, if they report stress, they tend to die earlier. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 These women have shortened telomeres, decreased activity of this enzyme, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and a very very rough number for every year you were taking care of a chronically 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 ill child, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you got roughly six years worth of aging. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This is real, this is not just somebody whining... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 this is real, medically serious 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 aging going on, and we can see that it is actually caused 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 by the chronic stress. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But there is hope. Doctor Blackburn co-discovered an 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 enzyme, telomerase, that can repair the damage. 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. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Preliminary data 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 suggests that a meeting of minds, such as this, may actually have a health benefit, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 by stimulating the healing effects of telomerase. 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... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What I found is that the humor is something... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there's a certain level of black humor that we have about our kids 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that only we appreciate, we're the only ones who get the jokes, and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in a way we are the only ones who are allowed to laugh at the jokes. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 One of the questions in the stress field is, you know, what are the active ingredients 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that reduce stress and that promote longevity? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And compassion and and caring for others 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 maybe one of those most important ingredients. So, those maybe the factors 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that promote longevity and increase telomerase, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and keep our cells rejuvenating and regenerating. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, perhaps connecting with and helping others 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 can help us to mend ourselves, and maybe even live longer, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 healthier lives. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Twenty years ago, Robert got a shocking preview of this idea. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The first troop he ever studied, the baboons he felt closest to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and had written books about, suffered a calamity. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It would have a profound effect on his research. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The Keekorok troop is the one I started with thirty years ago, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they were your basic old baboon troop at the time, and which means 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 males were aggressive, and society was highly stratified, and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 females took a lot of grief, in your basic off the rack baboon troop. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And then about, by now almost twenty years ago 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 something horrific and scientifically very interesting happened to that troop. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The Keekorok troop took to foraging for food in the garbage dump of a popular 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 tourist lodge. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it was a fatal move. The trash included meat 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 tainted with tuberculosis. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The result was that nearly half the males in the troop died. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Not unreasonably, I got depressed as hell and pretty damn angry about what 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 happened. 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a baboon troop, and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there was a lot of emotion there. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For Robert, a decade of research appeared to have been lost. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But then he made a curious observation 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 about who had died and who had survived. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It wasn't random who died. In that troop, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 if you were aggressive, and if you were not particularly socially connected, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 socially affiliative, you didn't spend your time grooming and hanging out, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 if you were that kind of male you died . 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Every alpha male was gone. The Keekorok troop 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 had been transformed. And what you were left with was 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 twice as many females as males. And the males who were remaining were, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you know, just to use scientific jargon, they were good guys. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They were not aggressive jerks, they were nice to the females, they were very 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 socially affiliative, it completely transformed the atmosphere in the troop. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When male baboons reach adolescence, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they typically leave their home troop and roam, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 eventually finding a new troop. 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 adolescent males elsewhere on this planet, 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. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We don't do stuff like that. We're not that aggressive. We spend more time 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 grooming each other. Males are calmer with each other. You do not dump on a 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 female if you're in a bad mood. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And it takes these new guys about six months, and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they assimilate this style, and you have baboon culture. And this particular troop 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 has a culture of 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of very low levels of aggression, and high levels of social affiliation, they're 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 doing that twenty years later. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And so the tragedy had provided Robert with a fundamental lesson, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 not just about cells, but how the 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 absence of stress could impact society. Do these guys have the same problems 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with high blood pressure? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 No. Do these guys have the same problems with brain chemistry related 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to anxiety stress hormone levels? Not at all. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's not just your rank, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it is what your rank means in your society. And the same is true for humans, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with only a slight variation. We belong to multiple hierarchies, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and you may have the worst job in your corporation, and no autonomy and control 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and predictability, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but you're the captain of the company softball team that year. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And you better bet you are going to have all sorts of psychological means to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 decide 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 about is 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 softball, I am the head of my team, people look up to me 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. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Well, that worked... and lots of baboon excrement. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Which, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 under the right circumstances, with the right season's experiment is a gold mine. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Unfortunately, this time around it is just 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a cage that I have to clean now. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I am studying stress for thirty years now, and I even 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 tell people how they should live differently, so presumably I should 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 have incorporated all of this, and the reality is, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 like, I am unbelievably stressed, and type A, and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 poorly coping, and why else would I study the stuff 80 hours a week? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 No doubt everything I advises could lose all its credibility if i keel over dead 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 from a heart attack in my early 50s. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm not good at dealing with stress. 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 every aspect of it, so that's good... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Nonetheless, this is pretty clearly a different place 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 than the savannah in East Africa. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You can do science here that's very different and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 more interesting in some ways, you can have hot showers on a more regular basis 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That is a more 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 interesting, varied world in lots of ways 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but there is a lot out there that you sure miss. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There is a pretty miraculous place, where 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 every meal tastes good, and your are 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 ten times more aware of every sensation. This is a hard place to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 come to year after year without getting, I think, a very 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 different metabolism and temperament. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I am more extroverted here, I am more, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 more happy... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It is a hard place not to be happy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So one 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 antidote to stress may be finding a place where we have control 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but how do we reckon with all the time we spend at work 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I would say what we've learned from 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the Whitehall study, from the studies of non-human primates 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is the conditions in which people live and work 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 are absolutely vital for the health 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Senior civil servant Sara Woodhall 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 enjoys the benefits of control. I don't 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 think I suffer from stress I don't work a 100 hours a week 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I control the amount of work that I do to make sure that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I can continue to deliver long-term 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Control... the amount of control is intimately related 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to where you are in the occupational hierarchy 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and what we have found is in general 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 people report to us that things have got worse. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That the amount of work stress has gone up. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Their illness rates go up. Where people report to us that they got more control 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they're being treated more fairly at work, there is more justice 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in the amount of treatment, so things are getting better, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the amount of illness goes down. I've been very lucky I 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I have never experienced any problems with my health. But not everyone is so lucky. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So is there a prescription for the vast majority of us 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 what they're doing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 give them more reward for the amount of efforts they put out 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and it might well be you have not just a healthier workplace 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but a more productive workplace as well. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I've managed to achieve a degree of control 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I have had 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a boss who appreciates me. He doesn't dominate team meetings he sits back 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 he invites people to contribute, he lets other people chair 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 leave just six months ago 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 he was so positive I think I feel sufficiently 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 empowered 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Who would have imagined 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that Robert's baboons would point us humans 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 towards a stress-free utopia. This may sound 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a little fanciful but I think what we're trying to create 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is a better society. The implications both of the baboons 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and of the British civil services is how can we create 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a society that has the conditions that will allow people to flourish. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And that's where this is heading to create 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a better society that promotes human flourishing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So what does the baboons teach the average person in there 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 don't bite somebody because you're having a bad day 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 don't just displace on them in any sort of manner, social affiliation is a remarkably 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 powerful thing and 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 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and all of that sort of things dominates 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 those things are really important and one of the greatest forms of sociality 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is giving rather than receiving and 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 all those things make for a better world 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Another one of the things that baboons teach us 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is if they are able to, in one generation transform what are supposed 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to be 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 textbooks social systems, sort of engraved in stone, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we don't have an excuse when we say they're certain inevitabilities about 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 human social systems 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And so, the haunting question that endures from Robert's life work 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 are we brave enough to learn from a baboon? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The Kikarak troop didn't just survive without stress 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they thrived. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Can we? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999