The impact of stress on our physical and emotional health | Robert Sapolsky, Ph.D. (#51 rebroadcast)

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
Welcome to another special episode of The Drive. For this week's episode, we're going to rebroadcast my conversation with Robert Sapolsky, which was originally released back in April of 2019, about four years ago. Many of you may recognize that name because Robert has written some incredible books, including the very popular, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, A Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Disease, and Coping.
I had first seen Robert speak about a year and a half prior to my interview with him. And I remember thinking during his talk, this is the first time I'm really being convinced of the true pathology of stress. You know, I think prior to that, I'd always heard the old adage that stress could kill you, but I kind of dismissed it as yeah, yeah, yeah. And we used to think that stress caused ulcers, but then we found out it was H pylori, et cetera, et cetera. But the way Robert spoke about it, I really began to pay more attention to it, which of course led to me reading up on this more. And at that point, I just decided I needed to meet Robert. Robert's work, in particular, his presentation that day, got me to think about the molecular and physiologic harm of hypercortisolemia in particular. In my conversation with Robert, we spoke a great deal about that, but we also talked about things outside of that. We talked about the role of depression, what the impact is of stress on the developing brain, and also on the brain later in life. And even on areas where the relationship between stress and disease is not that well understood yet. That clearly came across in our discussion of cancer. Robert is a professor of biology, of neurobiology, and of neurosurgery at Stanford. He's also a MacArthur Fellow. In 1987, he was awarded the fellowship, which some of you may recognize by its other name, the Genius Grant, something I consider very appropriate for a man of Robert's talents. Overall, I found this discussion riveting, and I hope to speak with Robert again, but for now, I hope you'll enjoy revisiting this discussion as much as I did. So without further delay, please enjoy, or re-enjoy, my conversation with the wonderful Robert Sapolsky.
Robert, thank you so much for making the time to meet with me today on a lovely, rainy San Francisco afternoon.

**Robert Sapolsky** (2:58)
Sure, glad to be indoors here.

**Peter Attia** (3:00)
As I was saying earlier, we had met once before really briefly, so briefly that you would not remember it, and of course only I would. Summer of 17, I believe you were giving a talk in Sun Valley and I was there, and you gave a talk on stress. Now it was to a lay audience, so you didn't really get to go into the depth. And I remember sitting in the audience thinking, oh, you know, a lot of what he's saying is really starting to make sense to me, and I can't wait to get a little deeper into this stuff.
Because truthfully, and I'm just gonna open with sort of my mea culpa, you've always heard people say stress kills.
And I gotta be honest with you, I always thought that was sort of nonsense. I was like, come on, what do you mean stress kills? Stress is good, it builds resilience, blah, blah, blah. What is the mechanism by which stress quote unquote kills? But of course, once you start to understand the endocrine system, and of course, training as a surgeon and not an endocrinologist, I sort of missed out on that, you start to see it. And in that talk, you admittedly, at a sort of high level for the audience, really walked through the danger of hypercortisolemia. And so in many ways, I guess a year and a half ago was really when I became a fan of your work and then kind of said, you know what, there is something to this. So anyway, with that, I appreciate you taking this time.