Mithu Storoni - Stress-Proof: The Scientific Solution to Protect Your Brain and Body—and Be More Resilient Every Day

T HERE IS A peculiar-looking building that stands proud in the middle of London. It is a post-modern buildingits sense of style is so evolved that modernity for it is too pass. Existing skyscrapers already hold enormous legions of humans but this colossal structure had no intention of stopping there. The building is wider at the top than it is at the bottom to hold even more people. Fortunately, rents tend to climb, the higher up you go. The building is shiny, with glazed, panelized, aluminum cladding reflecting all who dare shine upon it. Its vulgar vanity rises high above the level of its peers, so it greedily gorges on pure, unblemished sunshine while resembling a gargantuan, Stone Age walkie-talkie.

Londoners were prepared to overlook what many regarded as an eyesore, until one warm and sunny summer day in 2013 when for two hours in the afternoon, the building metamorphosed from a postmodern blunder into a New Age villain. With a light beam of destruction, it melted cars, blasted bicycles, blistered paint, and even set fire to a doormat. What really got London talking, however, was its ability to cook an egg. A journalist placed an egg on a frying pan and put the frying pan at the precise spot on the street below where the south-facing faade of the building converged the suns rays to temperatures of 243 F. The egg sizzled and was cooked within moments.

A newly hatched egg, underneath its hard shell, is runny and free. It goes through drastic change when you surround it with heat. There is little to notice on the outside while the inside is altered beyond recognition. We humans are very much like eggs. When plunged into the heat of our lives, our shells may remain the same, but our brains undergo structural change. We call the heat stress.

The walkie-talkie building in London is a metaphor for modern life. It is a product of globalization, born out of the urge to maximize income, boost productivity, out-compete rivals, leave behind peers, and ambitiously maintain pace with the fast sprint of modernity. In trying to do all of these things, it sends out cross fire. That cross fire cooks the egg. Our brains suffer.

This would be a sorry state of affairs were it not for a recent discovery. It is in fact possible to unboil an egg.

The scientist who managed to achieve this earth-shattering feat sent shockwaves through kitchens across the world, left Michelin-starred chefs from New York to Tokyo scratching their heads, and shattered the common saying that it is impossible to unboil an egg into extinction. He was quite deservedly awarded an Ig Nobel Prize.

Just as one can unboil an egg, one may also be able to unboil the brain. This book takes the process of stress and works it backward so, like unboiling an egg, you can undo and try to prevent some of the changes that take place in your brain and body when you are placed under the beam of the thoroughly modern and potentially damaging walkie-talkie building that is your daily life.

LOOKING AT STRESS IN A NEW WAY

I was born into a family of doctors, thinkers, exercisers, and yogis and grew up surrounded by tales of strange and unusual feats: men voluntarily disappearing into the icy Himalayas and living without warmth and with little food, just to train their minds, bodybuilders lying on beds of nails to train themselves not to perceive pain, yogis slowing their heart rate to such a low level that people around them grew frightened they were about to pass away. The brain, I was told, had the power to overturn decisions being made lower in the chain of command. We operate on an autopilot program, called the