" GUIDELINE #9: TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH. Being targeted by a predator, even or especially a human one, evokes the fight-or-flight response in animals and in people. This essentially adaptive response is intended by nature to be short-lived—the animal either flees or makes a stand against the predator, both actions requiring all of the body’s systems on alert to ensure survival. But when the predation is carried out over a long period of time, as is often the case in sociopathy, the physiological components of the fight-or-flight response become protracted: blood pressure and heart rate increase and remain high; stored reserves of fats and sugars are continually converted and released into the bloodstream (to supply extra energy to fight or run); muscles all over the body are tense; digestion slows and stomach acidity increases; slow and relaxed diaphragmatic breathing changes to fast and shallow chest breathing; and, beginning in the hypothalamus, a persistent chain of hormonal reactions stimulates the adrenal cortex to release unhealthily large quantities of stress hormones such as cortisol. For a while the body will attempt to adapt, but if it continues to be stressed, it will eventually succumb to exhaustion, immune system depletion, and illness. In other words, being targeted by a sociopath can make you very sick in the long run. "

― Martha Stout ,