Chronic stress, cortisol and midlife weight gain
Stress can become continuous when work, caregiving, health concerns, and financial responsibility no longer arrive one at a time. Sapolsky explains how repeated activation of stress systems can affect immunity, cardiovascular health, memory, mood, sleep, and metabolism. Weight gain cannot be reduced to cortisol or worry alone; food, medication, hormones, movement, sleep, genetics, and medical conditions may all matter. For this audience, the book’s strength is context rather than blame. Bodies evolved to handle acute danger, not endless anticipation, so recovery, control, social support, and realistic stress reduction deserve the same seriousness as productivity.
About Robert Sapolsky
Robert Sapolsky went to Kenya as a young biologist to study stress hormones in wild baboons and returned for years. Learning to dart, examine, and follow one troop gave his explanations of human stress an unusually vivid field-based foundation.
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