Stress, Portrait of a Killer - Robert Sapolsky

Summary

The video delves into the pervasive impact of stress on human health, contrasting its life-saving origins with its modern-day dangers. Through the lens of various studies, including those on baboons and macaque monkeys, it reveals how chronic stress can damage the heart, brain, and immune system. Notably, Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky’s research highlights stress’s role in societal dynamics and personal well-being. The video underscores the urgent need to understand and manage stress to protect our health, featuring insights from experts and real-world examples of stress's profound effects.

Takeaways

• 🧠 Stress is not just a state of mind; it's measurable and can be dangerous to health.
• 🏃‍♂️ Originally, stress was a survival mechanism, activating for short bursts of intense activity.
• 😢 Chronic stress can have severe effects, including potential brain cell death and changes in body composition.
• 🧬 Stress can impact us at a cellular level, affecting processes like telomere maintenance and potentially leading to accelerated aging.
• 📈 The impact of stress can be seen in various health issues, from ulcers to heart disease and cognitive function.
• 🦓 Robert Sapolsky's research on baboons in Kenya has shown that social structure and behavior can significantly affect stress levels and related health outcomes.
• 💉 Sapolsky's studies involved innovative methods like using a blowgun to collect blood samples from baboons to analyze stress hormone levels.
• 🌱 The right amount of stress can be beneficial, providing stimulation and excitement in controlled, short-term situations.
• 🌐 The modern world can cause stress through constant psychological triggers, unlike the physical threats that originally triggered the stress response.
• 🤝 Social connection and affiliation can mitigate the negative effects of stress, as seen in the transformed baboon troop after a tragedy.
• 🔬 The study of stress has evolved, now including understanding the role of hormones like adrenaline and glucocorticoids in the body's response to stress.

Q & A

What is the original purpose of stress according to the script?

The original purpose of stress was to save us, as it was a response to immediate danger that helped us react quickly for survival, such as running from a predator.

How has the role of stress changed in modern times?

In modern times, stress has become a scourge of our lives, causing chronic issues as it is no longer limited to immediate physical threats but also includes psychological stressors like financial worries and work pressure.

What are the two hormones central to the stress response mentioned in the script?

The two hormones central to the stress response are adrenaline (epinephrine) and glucocorticoids, both of which are released by the adrenal gland during stress.

What is the role of adrenaline and glucocorticoids in the stress response?

Adrenaline and glucocorticoids are the backbone of the stress response, preparing the body for a fight-or-flight situation by increasing heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen supply to muscles, and by suppressing non-essential functions like growth and tissue repair.

How does chronic stress impact the body differently compared to short-term stress?

Chronic stress can have long-term damaging effects on the body, such as shrinking parts of the brain, adding fat to the belly, and even unraveling chromosomes, whereas short-term stress is a natural response to immediate threats and is not harmful if resolved.

What is the connection between stress and peptic ulcers as discussed in the script?

Stress was initially thought to be the primary cause of peptic ulcers, but later research identified a bacteria as the main cause. However, stress can still contribute to ulcer development by suppressing the immune system and disrupting the body's ability to heal itself.

How does social standing or rank affect an individual's susceptibility to stress-related health issues?

Social standing or rank can significantly affect an individual's stress levels and susceptibility to stress-related health issues. Lower-ranking individuals often experience more stress due to social pressures and have a higher risk of related health problems.

What is the role of the hippocampus in the brain and how can stress affect it?

The hippocampus is the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory. Chronic stress can damage this area, leading to a reduced capacity for learning and memory retention.

What are telomeres and how can stress impact their length?

Telomeres are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes. Chronic stress has been found to shorten telomeres, which is associated with accelerated aging and a higher risk of age-related diseases.

What is the potential benefit of social affiliation and helping others in relation to stress?

Social affiliation and helping others can potentially reduce stress and promote longevity by increasing the activity of telomerase, an enzyme that repairs and maintains telomeres, thus counteracting the aging effects of stress.

How did the change in the social structure of the Keekorok baboon troop affect their stress levels and overall health?

The loss of aggressive alpha males in the Keekorok troop led to a more socially affiliative and less aggressive society. This change was associated with lower stress levels and improved health, including reduced blood pressure and anxiety-related brain chemistry issues.

Outlines

00:00

😨 The Paradox of Stress

The script begins with a reflection on the modern perception of stress as a constant burden, contrasting it with its evolutionary purpose as a short-term survival response. It introduces the idea that stress is not merely a mental state but a tangible, measurable force with the potential to be lethal. The narrative highlights the transformation of stress from a savior to a scourge, affecting physical health by shrinking the brain, adding fat, and damaging chromosomes. The script also emphasizes the importance of addressing stress as an immediate concern rather than a distant threat.

05:05

🧪 Robert Sapolsky's Baboon Research

This paragraph delves into the work of Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky, who has spent three decades studying stress. Sapolsky's research takes him from the high-pressure environment of academia to the plains of Kenya, where he observes baboons to understand human stress and disease. The paragraph describes his innovative method of anesthetizing baboons to collect blood samples without inducing stress, and his discovery of the critical role of hormones like adrenaline and glucocorticoids in the stress response. It also contrasts the short-lived stress response of animals with the chronic stress experienced by humans.

10:07

🧬 The Impact of Stress on Health and Disease

The script discusses the historical misconception that stress directly causes ulcers, which was debunked by the discovery of the role of bacteria. However, it then reveals that stress can indirectly contribute to ulcer development by suppressing the immune system, allowing bacteria to thrive. The narrative extends this concept to the cardiovascular effects of stress, showing how stress hormones can lead to atherosclerosis in macaque monkeys. The paragraph underscores the immediate and long-term health implications of stress, suggesting that it can have deadly consequences.

15:13

🧠 Stress and the Brain: Memory and Cellular Impact

This section explores the impact of stress on the brain, focusing on the hippocampus's role in learning and memory. It recounts Sapolsky's findings that chronic stress can physically shrink brain cells, particularly in the hippocampus, impairing memory. The paragraph also discusses the broader effects of stress on cognitive function, including the temporary memory loss that can occur during acute stress. The narrative highlights the serious implications of stress on brain health and cognitive performance.

20:15

🔬 The Biological Consequences of Chronic Stress

The script examines the long-term biological effects of chronic stress, including its impact on telomeres—the protective caps on chromosomes. It describes a study on chronically stressed mothers, showing that stress can accelerate telomere shortening, effectively increasing biological age. The paragraph introduces the enzyme telomerase, which can repair telomere damage, and suggests that social connections, laughter, and a supportive community may stimulate telomerase activity, offering a potential buffer against the aging effects of stress.

25:21

🌍 The Transformative Power of Social Affiliation

This paragraph narrates a dramatic event in the life of the Keekorok baboon troop, which lost many of its aggressive males to tuberculosis. The tragedy led to a societal shift towards a more affiliative and less aggressive culture, with surviving males adopting kinder behaviors. The script suggests that this change in social dynamics had health benefits, reducing stress-related issues like high blood pressure and anxiety. The narrative draws a parallel to human society, emphasizing the importance of social affiliation and hierarchy in determining stress levels and health outcomes.

🤔 Personal Reflections on Stress and Research

In the final paragraph, the script reflects on the personal journey of the researcher, acknowledging the irony of studying stress while struggling with it personally. It touches on the researcher's love for his work and the unique environment of the savanna, which offers a stark contrast to the modern world. The paragraph concludes with a candid admission of the researcher's own stress and the challenge of applying his own findings to improve his well-being.

Keywords

💡Stress

Stress, in the context of this video, refers to the psychological and physiological response to a perceived threat or demand. It is central to the video's theme, illustrating how stress, once a survival mechanism, has become a pervasive issue in modern life. The script discusses how stress can be detrimental to health, affecting the brain, heart, and immune system, as exemplified by the impact of stress on baboons in the Masai Mara Reserve.

💡Glucocorticoids

Glucocorticoids are a class of steroid hormones that play a critical role in the stress response. The script explains that these hormones, along with adrenaline, are the 'backbones' of the stress response, helping the body to mobilize energy and resources during a crisis. However, chronic exposure to glucocorticoids due to ongoing stress can have negative health effects, including brain cell death, as seen in the study of stressed rats.

💡Hippocampus

The hippocampus is a region of the brain that is primarily associated with the formation of new memories. In the video, it is highlighted that chronic stress can lead to a reduction in the size of the hippocampus, impairing memory and learning. This is demonstrated through the research conducted by Robert Sapolsky, where stressed rats showed a significant shrinkage in this part of the brain.

💡Telomeres

Telomeres are the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that shorten as cells divide. The video discusses how chronic stress can accelerate the shortening of telomeres, which is associated with aging and cell death. The study of stressed mothers in the script illustrates this concept, showing that their telomeres were shorter, indicating accelerated aging due to stress.

💡Telomerase

Telomerase is an enzyme that can rebuild and lengthen telomeres, potentially reversing the effects of stress-related aging. The script mentions Dr. Blackburn's research, indicating that telomerase could be stimulated by positive social interactions and humor, offering a counterbalance to the negative effects of stress on telomere length.

💡Social Hierarchy

Social hierarchy refers to the ranking system within a social group, which can influence stress levels. The video script describes how baboons and macaques organize themselves into hierarchies, with those lower in rank experiencing more stress. This concept is also applied to humans, suggesting that an individual's perception of their rank in a meaningful social context can influence their stress response.

💡Atherosclerosis

Atherosclerosis is a condition where plaque builds up inside the arteries, restricting blood flow and leading to heart disease. The script uses the example of subordinate macaque monkeys to illustrate how stress can contribute to atherosclerosis by increasing blood pressure and damaging artery walls, which can result in heart attacks.

💡Stress Response

The stress response is the body's automatic reaction to a stressful situation, involving the release of hormones and physiological changes to prepare for a fight or flight. The video explains that while this response was crucial for survival in the past, it can be harmful in modern times when activated by psychological stressors rather than physical threats.

💡Adrenaline

Adrenaline, also known as epinephrine in the medical context, is a hormone that is released during the stress response to increase heart rate, blood flow, and oxygen supply to muscles. The script highlights adrenaline as one of the key hormones involved in the stress response, preparing the body for immediate action.

💡Social Affiliation

Social affiliation refers to the bonds and connections between individuals within a social group. The video script discusses how social affiliation can buffer against the negative effects of stress, as seen in the transformed Keekorok baboon troop, where increased social affiliation led to a reduction in aggression and improved health outcomes.

💡Type A Behavior

Type A behavior is a personality type characterized by competitiveness, impatience, and chronic urgency. The script uses this term to describe Robert Sapolsky's own behavior, suggesting that despite his extensive knowledge of stress, he still struggles with stress management due to his Type A personality.

Highlights

Stress was once a survival mechanism but has become a modern scourge.

Scientific discoveries show that stress is measurable and dangerous.

Chronic stress can kill brain cells, particularly in the hippocampus region responsible for memory.

Stress can cause physical changes such as shrinking brains and adding fat to the belly.

Stress impacts our health by unraveling chromosomes, leading to premature aging.

Robert Sapolsky's research on baboons in Kenya provides insights into human stress and disease.

Baboons' social structure and behavior serve as a model for stress-related diseases in Western societies.

Stress hormones adrenaline and glucocorticoids are critical for the stress response and survival.

Humans activate the same stress response for psychological states as for physical threats.

Stress can be beneficial in moderate amounts, providing stimulation and excitement.

The connection between stress and ulcers was overturned by the discovery of Helicobacter pylori bacteria.

Stress can exacerbate the effects of ulcer-causing bacteria by suppressing the immune system.

Social stress in macaque monkeys is linked to atherosclerosis and heart disease.

Dr. Blackburn's research shows that chronic stress shortens telomeres, indicating cellular aging.

Telomerase, an enzyme that repairs telomeres, offers a potential counter to the aging effects of stress.

Social affiliation and support can reduce stress and may contribute to longevity.

A dramatic shift in baboon troop dynamics following a tragedy led to a culture of low aggression and high social affiliation.

Robert Sapolsky's personal experience with stress underscores the difficulty of applying scientific knowledge to one's own life.

Transcripts

[MUSIC]

What am I thinking about? Mortgage, debt, money pouring out...

And I felt a lump--I know cancer when I feel it. Where is she?

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

It is everyone's inferno, bedeviling our minds, igniting our nights,

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

[MUSIC]

Once, its purpose was to save us. >> If you're a normal mammal,

what stress is about is three minutes of screaming terror on the savanna, after

which it's either over with or you're over with. >> But everything changed.

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

I just burst into tears, and wept, and wept. >> Today,

scientific discoveries, in the field... [PUFF SOUND]. >> Got him.

Ooop. >> And in the lab, prove that stress is not a state of mind, but

something measurable, and dangerous. >> This is not an abstract concept.

It's not something that maybe someday you should do something about.

You need to attend to it today. >> In some of the most unexpected places,

scientists are revealing just how lethal stress can be. >> Chronic stress could

do something as unsubtle and grotesque as kill some of your brain cells.

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

adding fat to our bellies, even unraveling our chromosomes.

>> This is real, this is not just somebody whining. [ANIMAL DISTRESS SOUND].

>> Stress--savior, tyrant, plague--its portrait revealed.

[MUSIC]

>> This program was made possible by contributions to

your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you.

[MUSIC]

>> All of us have a personal relationship with stress, but

few of us know how it operates within us. Or

understand how the onslaught of the modern world can stress us to the point of death.

[MUSIC]

Fewer still know what we can do about it.

[MUSIC]

But over the last three decades, Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky

has been advancing our understanding of stress--how it impacts our bodies, and

how our social standing can make us more or less susceptible. >> Is the aggregate

bad news and more... >> Most of the time, you can find him teaching and

researching in the high-achieving, high-stressed world of brain science.

>> The paper is this huge contrast between... >> But

that's only part of his story. For a few weeks every year or

so, Sapolsky shifts his lab to a place more than 9,000 miles away on

the plains of the Masai Mara Reserve, in Kenya, East Africa.

[MUSIC]

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

He suspected he could find out more about human stress and

disease by looking at non-humans, and he knew just the non-humans.

[MUSIC]

>> You live in a place like this, you're a baboon, and

you only have to spend about three hours a day getting your calories. And

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

free time every day to devote to making somebody else just miserable. [SCREECH

SOUNDS] They are not being stressed by lions chasing them all the time,

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

psychological tumult invented by their own species.

They are a perfect model for Westernized stress-related disease.

>> To determine just what toll stress was taking on their bodies, Sapolsky wanted to

look inside these wild baboons at the cellular level for the very first time.

To do this, he would have to take their blood in the most unassuming way.

[MUSIC]

>> Basically, what you're trying to do is anesthetize a baboon, without him knowing

it's coming. Because you don't want to have any of this anticipatory stress, so

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

for three hours, and, finally, when he's winded, dart him with an anesthetic.

[MUSIC]

Now, the big advantages of a blowgun are that it's pretty much silent, and hasn't

a whole lot in a way of moving parts, but the big drawback is doesn't go very far.

[MUSIC]

So what you spend just a bizarre amount of time doing is trying to figure out how to

look nonchalant around a baboon. [PUFF SOUND] Got him.

Time? Okay, he is wobbling now. Whoop, there he goes.

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

the stress response. >> Well, to make sense of what's happening in your body,

you've got these two hormones that are the workhorses, the whole stress response.

One of them, we all know, adrenaline--American version, epinephrine.

The other is a less known hormone called glucocorticoids, comes out of the adrenal

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

[ZEBRA BARKS]. >> That stress response and

those two hormones are critical to our survival. [HOOF SOUNDS].

>> Because what stress is about is somebody is very intent on eating you, or

you are very intent on eating somebody, and there's an immediate crisis going on.

>> When you run for your life, basics are all that matter. Lungs work overtime to

pump mammoth quantities of oxygen into the bloodstream. The heart races to pump

that oxygen throughout the body so muscles respond instantly. [SPLASHING SOUNDS].

>> You need your blood pressure up to deliver that energy.

You need to turn off anything that's not essential--growth, reproduction, you know,

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

that sort of thing--do it later, if there is a later. >> When the zebra escapes,

its stress response shuts down. But human beings can't seem

to find their off switch. >> We turn on the exact same stress response for

purely psychological states---thinking about the ozone layer, the taxes coming

up, mortality, 30-year mortgages--we turn on the same stress response.

And the key difference there is, we're not doing it for a real physiological reason,

and we're doing it nonstop. >> By not turning

off the stress response when reacting to life's traffic jams, we wallow in

a corrosive bath of hormones. Even though it's not life or death,

we hyperventilate, our hearts pound, muscles tense. >> Ironically,

after a while, the stress response is more damaging than the stressor itself,

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

No zebra on Earth, running for its life,

would understand why...fear of speaking in public would cause you to secrete

the same hormones that it's doing at that point to save its life.

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

life-threatening, trivial, or fun. >> You get the right amount of stress,

and we call it stimulation. The goal in life isn't to get rid of stress--the goal

in life is to have the right type of stress, because when it's the right type,

we love it. [ROARING SOUND]

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

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

It's not for nothing roller coaster rides are not three weeks long. And most of all, what they're about

is, you relinquish a little bit of control in a setting that overall feels safe.

>> 50 and 25. >> Anticipating the long reach of stress is a recent idea, for

when Robert was Rachel's age, scientists believed stress was

the cause of only one major problem. [THROBBING SOUND].

>> This is a picture of a major American personnel problem--an ugly sore

that doctors call a peptic ulcer, eating away at the wall of a man's stomach.

[MUSIC]

>> Those stomach pains that you talk about, the gnawing, the burning, those

are obvious symptoms of gastric ulcer. >> Thirty years ago, what's the disease that

comes to everybody's mind when you mention stress--it's ulcers, stress and ulcers,

stress and ulcers. And this was the first stress-related disease discovered,

in fact, 70 years ago. >> What I want you to do is to work on your attitude.

>> My attitude? >> That's right. Ulcers breed on the wrong kind of feeling.

You've got to be honest with yourself about the way you feel about it.

>> Finding a new doctor sounds like a better answer to me. >> The connection

between stress and ulcers was mainstream medical gospel until the early 1980s.

Then, Australian researchers identified a bacteria as the major cause of ulcers.

>> And this overthrew the entire field, this was,

it's got nothing to do with stress, it's a bacterial disorder. And I'm willing to

bet half the gastroenterologists on Earth, when they heard about this, went out and

celebrated that night. This was, like, the greatest news--never again were they going

to have to sit down their patients, and make eye contact, and

ask them how is it going, so, anything stressful--it's got nothing to

do with stress, it's a bacterial disorder. >> So no longer would the solution be

stress management, now it could be something as simple as a pill.

It was a major breakthrough--stress didn't cause ulcers. Case closed.

[MUSIC]

But a few years later, the research took a new twist.

Scientists discovered that this ulcer-causing bacteria wasn't

unique--in fact, as much as two thirds of the world's population has it.

[MUSIC]

So why do only a fraction of these people develop ulcers? Research revealed that

when stressed, the body begins shutting down all non-essential systems, including

the immune system. And it became clear that, if you shut down the immune system,

stomach bacteria can run amuck. >> Because what the stress does,

is wipe out the ability of your body to begin to repair your stomach walls

when they start rotting away from his bacteria. [SOUND]. >> So

stress can cause ulcers by disrupting our body's ability to heal itself.

[MUSIC]

If stress can undermine the immune system, what other havoc can it wreak?

One answer comes from a colony of captive macaque monkeys near Winston-Salem,

North Carolina. >> People think of stress as something that keeps them up at night,

or something that makes them yell at their kids. But, you ask me, what is stress,

I say, Look at it--it's this huge plaque in this artery, that's what stress is.

>> For two decades, Dr. Carol Shively has been studying the arteries of macaques.

[MUSIC]

Like baboons and British civil servants, these primates organize themselves into

distinctly hierarchical groups, and subject one another to social stress.

[SCREECH SOUND] Stress hormones can trigger an intense negative cardiovascular

response, a pounding heart and increased blood pressure.

So, if stress follows rank, would the cardiovascular system of

a high-ranking macaque, call him a primate CEO, be different from his subordinate?

[MUSIC]

When Shively looked at the arteries of a dominant monkey,

one with little history of stress, its arteries were clean. But

a subordinate monkey's arteries told a grim tale. >> A subordinate artery

has lots more atherosclerosis built up inside it than a dominant artery does.

>> Stress, and the resulting flood of hormones, had increased blood pressure,

damaging artery walls, making them repositories for plaque. >> So

now, when you feel threatened, your arteries don't expand, and

your heart muscle doesn't get more blood, and that can lead to a heart attack.

This is not an abstract concept, it's not something that maybe someday you should do

something about, you need to attend to it today, because it's affecting the way

your body functions. And a stress today will affect your health tomorrow and for

years to come. >> Social and psychological stress,

whether macaque, human, or baboon, can clog our arteries, restrict blood flow,

jeopardize the health of our heart--and that's just the beginning of stress's

deadly curse. Robert's early research demonstrated

that stress can work on us in an even more frightening way.

>> Well, back when I was starting in this business, what I wound

up focusing on was what seemed an utterly implausible idea at the time,

which was chronic stress and chronic exposure to glucocorticoids could

do something as unsubtle and grotesque as kill some of your brain cells.

>> As a PhD candidate at Rockefeller University in the early '80s,

Sapolsky collaborated with his mentor, Dr.

Bruce McEwen, to follow the path of stress into the brain.

[MUSIC]

They subjected lab rats to chronic stress, and then examined their brain cells.

The team made an astonishing find. While the cells of normal rat brains

have extensive branches, stressed rats brain cells were dramatically smaller.

>> And, what was most interesting in many ways was the part of the brain where this

was happening--hippocampus. You take Intro Neurobiology any time for

the last 5,000 years, and what you learn is: hippocampus is learning and memory.

>> Stress in these rats shrank the part of their brain responsible for memory.

>> Stress affects memory in two ways. Chronic stress can actually change brain

circuits, so that we lose the capacity to remember things as we need to.

Very severe acute stress can have another effect,

which is often we refer to as stress makes you stupid, which is making it impossible

for you in, over short periods of time to remember things you know perfectly well.

>> We all know that phenomenon, we all know that one from back when,

when we stressed ourselves by not getting any sleep at all. And the next morning at

9 o'clock, we couldn't remember a single thing for that final exam.

You take a human and stress them big time, long time,

and you're going to have a hippocampus that pays the price as well.

>> Dr. Blackburn is a leader in the field of telomere research.

>> We have 46 chromosomes and they're capped off at each end by telomeres.

Nobody knew in humans whether telomeres and their fraying down over life

would be affected by chronic stress, and so, we decided we would look at

this cohort of chronically stressed mothers. And we decided to

ask what's happening to their telomeres and to the maintenance of their telomeres.

What we found was the length of the telomeres directly relates to

the amount of stress somebody is under, and the number of years that they've

been under the stress. >> Such stressed mothers became the focus of a study by Dr.

Blackburn's colleague, psychologist Elissa Epel.

[MUSIC]

>> Mothers of young children are a highly stressed group.

They are often balancing competing demands like work and child rearing, and

often don't have time to take care of themselves. So, if you add on top of that,

the extra burden of caring for a child with special needs,

it can be overwhelming. It can tax the very reserves that sustain people, and

if they are stressed, if they report stress, they tend to die earlier.

>> These women have shortened telomeres, decreased activity of this enzyme, and

a very, very rough number, for every year you're taking care of a chronically ill

child, you got roughly six years worth of aging. >> This is real,

this is not just somebody whining--this is real, medically serious aging going on,

and we can see that it's actually caused by the chronic stress. [WHOOSH SOUND].

>> But there is hope. Dr. Blackburn co-discovered an enzyme, telomerase,

that can repair the damage. >> It's what I always call it the threat of hope.

[LAUGHTER] [CROSSTALK]. >> That's good. That's good. >> Yeah. >> Preliminary data

suggests that a meeting of minds, such as this, may actually have a health benefit,

by stimulating the healing effects of telomerase. >> [CROSSTALK] And laugh.

>> And laugh. If you don't, if you don't laugh, forget it, you can't handle it,

it's... >> What I found is that the humor is something--there's a certain

level of black humor that we have about our kids that only we appreciate,

we are the only ones who get the jokes and, in a way,

we're the only ones who are allowed to laugh at the jokes.

>> Right. >> One of the questions in the stress field is, you know,

what are the active ingredients that reduce stress and that promote longevity?

And compassion and caring for others may be one of those

most important ingredients. So, those may be the factors that promote longevity and

increase telomerase, and keep ourselves rejuvenating and regenerating.

[MUSIC]

>> So, perhaps connecting with and helping others can help us to mend ourselves, and

maybe even live longer, healthier lives. Twenty years ago,

Robert got a shocking preview of this idea. The first troop he ever studied,

the baboons he felt closest to and had written books about,

suffered a calamity. It would have a profound effect on his research.

>> The Keekorok troop is the one I started with 30 years ago, and they were your

basic old baboon troop at the time--and which means males were aggressive, and

society was highly stratified, and females took a lot a grief, and

your basic off-the-rack baboon troop. And then about, by now almost 20 years ago,

something horrific and scientifically very interesting happened to that troop.

>> The Keekorok troop took to foraging for

food in the garbage dump of a popular tourist lodge.

It was a fatal move--the trash included meat tainted with tuberculosis.

The result was that nearly half the males in the troop died. >> Not unreasonably,

I got depressed as hell and pretty damn angry about what happened. You know,

you're 30 years old, you can afford to expend a lot of emotion on a baboon troop,

and there was a lot of emotion there.

[MUSIC]

>> For Robert, a decade of research appeared to have been lost.

But then he made a curious observation about who had died and

who had survived. >> It wasn't random who died. In that troop,

if you were aggressive, and if you were not particularly socially connected,

socially affiliative, you didn't spend your time grooming and hanging out,

if you were that kind of male, you died. >> Every alpha male was gone.

The Keekorok troop had been transformed. >> And,

what you were left with was twice as many females as males. And the males who

were remaining were, you know, just to use scientific jargon, they were good guys.

They were not aggressive jerks, they were nice to the females, they were very

socially affiliative---it completely transformed the atmosphere in the troop.

[MUSIC]

>> When male baboons reach adolescence, they typically leave their home troop and

roam, eventually finding a new troop. >> And

when new adolescent males would join the troop,

they'd come in just as jerky as any adolescent males elsewhere on this planet,

and it would take them about six months to learn...we're not like that in this troop.

We don't do stuff like that. We're not that aggressive.

We spend more time grooming each other. Males are calmer with each other.

You do not dump on a female if you're in a bad mood. And it takes these new guys

about six months, and they assimilate this style, and you have baboon

culture in this particular troop has a culture of very low levels of aggression,

and high levels of social affiliation, and they're doing that 20 years later. >> And

so the tragedy had provided Robert with a fundamental lesson, not just about cells,

but how the absence of stress could impact society. >> Do these guys have the same

problems with high blood pressure? Nope. Do these guys have the same problems with

brain chemistry related to anxiety, stress hormone levels? Not at all.

It's not just your rank, it's what your rank means in your society. >> And

the same is true for

humans, with only a slight variation. >> We belong to multiple hierarchies.

And you may have the worst job in your corporation, and no autonomy and

control of predictability, but you're the captain of the company softball team that

year. And you better bet you are going to have all sorts of psychological means to

decide it's just a job, nine to five, that's not what the world is about--what

the world's about is softball. I'm the head of my team, people look up to me.

And you come out of that deciding you are on top of the hierarchy that matters to

you. [CAGE SOUNDS] Well,

that worked. Damn, lots of baboon poop... Which,

under the right circumstances, with the right season's experiment is a gold mine.

Unfortunately, this time around it's just a cage to have to clean now.

[MUSIC]

I'm studying stress for 30 years now, and I even tell people how they should live

differently--so, presumably, I should have incorporated all of this.

And the reality is, like, I'm unbelievably stressed, and type A,

and poorly coping, and, like, why else would I study this stuff 80 hours a week?

No doubt everything I advise is going to lose all its credibility if I keel over

dead from a heart attack in my early 50s. Nah, I'm not good at dealing with stress.

You know, one thing that works to my advantage is I love my work and

I love every aspect of it, so that's good... Nonetheless,

this is pretty clearly a different place than the savanna in East Africa.

You know, you can do science here that's very different and

more interesting in some ways. You can have hot showers on a more regular basis.

It's a more interesting, varied world in lots of ways, but,

you know, there's a lot out there that you sure miss.

[MUSIC]

It is a pretty miraculous place, where every meal tastes good, and

you're ten times more aware of every sensation.

[MUSIC]

This is a hard place to come to year after year without getting, I think,

a very different metabolism and temperament. I'm more extroverted here...

I'm more, more happy... This is a hard place not to be happy.

[MUSIC]