Have you ever been grabbed by a book title? I have. Recently, I ran across a book titled “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” by Robert M. Sapolsky. That caught my attention. Over the past year, I’ve been pulled into the world of neuroscience and trying to learn about dementia. Both my parents suffered with dementia and I wanted to learn what I could about why it happens and if there was anything I could do to avoid it.

“Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” is a book about stress. You may already see where this is headed. I had a pretty good idea what the answer is. If you guessed that it’s because Zebras don’t have a lot of stress, you would be right. But, surely zebras and lions have some stress in their lives.

Here is what seems to make the difference between them and us. Have you ever heard of the terms “fight-or-flight?” It seems that zebras, lions, people and most everything else, have certain hormones that are triggered when there is perceived danger. Those hormones are a good thing when they fire, they give us more of the energy we need to deal with the danger.

Here is an example. The zebra is out for his/her morning walk down to the watering hole. It’s a nice morning with sunshine, fresh air, and birds singing happily in the trees. Suddenly, a lion jumps out of the bushes looking for breakfast. What happens to the zebra? The fight-or-flight hormones kick in, and the zebra is off in a flash of dust and a hardy Hi Ho Silver, away. Now those same hormones kick in for the lion because breakfast just ran away. So off goes the lion, chasing the zebra. One of two outcomes is inevitable. The zebra wins and get away or the lion wins and settles down to a nice breakfast. Either way, the scenario is over and the hormones return to normal and the stress levels are diminished.

A similar type scenario might happen to us in a dark alley facing an armed robber. Or, if you live in the Midwest, a tornado is headed right for your house. Those are examples of when the fight-or-flight hormones would be appropriate to help us. The problem is that we can imagine things like that happening and those same hormones kick in to protect us. When we continually worry about things that might happen or could happen, we trigger those hormones and our body goes into the fight-or-flight mode, without any good reason.

For animals like the zebra and lion, the most stress related things are life-threatening crises. For us, we worry about many more things, and most of the things we spend time worrying about, we have no control over. Will he or she like what I’m wearing? That’s not life-threatening. Is traffic going to be heavy and make me late to work? Leave earlier. If you can do something about the situation, do it. If not, don’t spend your energy worrying about it. If you are a Christian, give control back to God, where it belongs.