Stress

While flying back from adelaide, I watched a documentary called "stress, the silent killer". It documented how people and baboon lower in an hierarchy have higher stress levels than the chief enchiladas. And how higher levels of stress lead to high blood pressure, increase in the bacteria that causes ulcer, and to clogged arteries, in other words to many visits to the doctor, etc. This is all old stuff and it is not what I wanted to talk about, but something else.

The stanford prof doing the baboon study was saying that a zebra in the savanna has short moments of very high levels of stress, and its two hormones, adrenaline and another one, whenever it is being chased by a lion and running for its life. After the chase is over, the zebra is either dead or has survived and the stress is gone, and therefore the zebra is no longer stressed. 

However, the same high levels of stress have been identified in humans when they are, let's say, stuck in traffic or have a report deadline of some sort. Therefore, the prof was saying that the zebra in the savanna running for its life would NEVER understand how people stuck in traffic can be as stressed as it.

So my little piece of Aussie wisdom: remember the zebra!