THE SCIENCE OF STRESS INTRODUCTION
he stakes were a lot simpler a couple of
million years ago when we were living on the
savanna—uglier, yes, but simpler. There was the
business of food, for one thing. You either ate or
got eaten—and given that we were a slow, plump,
flightless species with neither fangs nor claws,
the getting-eaten part was a very real possibil-
ity. Injury and disease could get you too, and as often as not they did.
In a world teeming with viruses and bacteria but with absolutely no
human knowledge of sanitation, wound dressing or medical care, a
broken leg, a bout of flu or even a mild infection from a simple cut
could easily mean a nasty end. As for the whole primal reason for
being alive in the first place—mating and breeding and producing lit-
tle genetic copies of yourself—good luck keeping your hypothetical
offspring alive in such an existential free-fire zone.
If there was anything that made this kind of binary, life-or-death
environment survivable, it was that we were well equipped to han-
FIGHT OR
FLIGHT
FOREVER
As we have evolved, so have the ways
that we experience—and attempt to
manage—the growing stress in our lives
BY JEFFREY KLUGER
T
