Few weeks ago, one of my dear friends shared with me his pain that wasn’t related to physical pain, it was more of a mental, emotional, and psychological pain.
My dear friend is a software engineer, he lives in the suburb of Philadelphia in a beautiful house with his wife and an amazing daughter.
He works for a big e-commerce company.
He told me he is in a position now to leave the job and go back to India and sell coconut water on the Indian beach.
His words, “I feel like my life now is a piece of shit, my life is draining, and all the time I feel heavy and overwhelmed.”
Obviously, it was an informal derogatory language that came out of his mouth suddenly, but I took it very seriously in my mind and it made me really think about our work and its impact on our life.
I am quite aware that people have different problems in life and most of them are stressed out due to financial problems.
If you earn a good amount of money and run your life well above the average American household, you should be happy.
But I feel like that’s not true anymore.
This world has changed enormously now.
My dear friend doesn’t go to the office, almost 90 percent of his work is remote, he can work from his comfort home, he doesn’t have traffic problems, he has no 9 to 5 barrier, but still he is suffering more than anybody else who goes to the office everyday.
My thought process emerged and I’m asking myself why people’s lives go out of balance and they suffer so heavily even though they look happy from outside.
One key factor that I found from my research is elevated stress due to excessive workload.
Stress happens due to many reasons but one of the reasons for elevated stress is excessive mental burden that affects the healthy body.
A lot of people forget that a healthy body is our main asset in life and success is the action it enables.
One of the things I found in stressed people is they are unable to observe everything around them.
They cannot notice the smallest details around them and they are unable to connect the dots around those details and they give up very quickly.
They can’t even reflect on the day, what they actually did, and what they ate, and how many hours they had a quality sleep the day before.
We must understand that good health is the access to a good life, we can’t give up this asset so fast so quickly.
I advocate a lot about healthy lifestyle and nutrition than any other things in life.
I strongly believe that if our body is healthy we can walk boldly and unwaveringly with full authority over time, creativity, and life choices.
This authority is key to spreading joy and happiness in life.
I also believe that a healthy body reassures us that we are worthy of personal sovereignty and are able to create plan B for life.
Healthy body reminds us that we are not here just to stress out and kill disease.
The depressing news that I found from The American Institute of Stress is that at least 120,000 people die each year as a direct result of work-related stress in US.
At least 65 percent of U.S. workers say work is the main cause of stress.
If we convert that stress into stress related healthcare costs, that would be $190 billion a year.
This astronomical number indicates that we have to take action for this silent killer in society.
Science of stress and modern life
The total burden on our body that builds up when we are exposed to repeated stressors is allostatic load.
It is basically the total effects that chronic stress has on our mental and physical health.
It is a ‘wear and tear’ on us due to life and environmental stressors.
Our body’s sympathetic nervous system produces stress chemicals and the adrenal hormone system protects our body from the effects of stress at low levels.
The problems start to appear at high levels when we start to expose stress repeatedly over time.
When our body becomes overloaded with stress, it shows many physiological effects and later diseases due to inflammation caused by free radicals.
Remember, stress response ignites free radicals, the damaging molecules that lead to inflammation.
If we suffer from chronic stress, we feel no pleasure in anything.
My dear friend used to say he doesn’t like social connections which is one of the biggest symptoms of chronic stress.
As we know high stress is bad but low stress is also not good for us.
Generally at a low stress level, we feel underload and low morale, and may be a little bit of fatigue and then we reach the optimum point of stress level.
But once we pass that optimum level, we move towards exhaustion, breakdown, completely overload, and burndown.
I believe that’s what happened to my dear friend.
Chronic stress invites many negative effects in our body.
Dysfunctional mitochondria, increased inflammation, changes in brain function, changes in genes and epigenome are some of them.
Chronic stress is a main cause of faster aging by losing telomeres and damaging DNA.
To make you more memorable, our DNA is a shoelace and telomeres are the caps at the end of shoelace to protect DNA.
So basically, telomeres are the caps to prevent breaking down of DNA.
If we are too stressed all the time, normal aging is no more normal.
A higher level of stress creates shortening of telomeres, so one stressful year can damage five to ten years of normal aging.
Remember, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, MD, cardiology professor and author of “The 21-Day Immunity Plan” says “Stress is a silent killer.”
We have to recognize it as soon as possible and act accordingly.
Stress and hormone secretion
When our body detects emotional and physical stress, our sympathetic nervous system becomes very active.
Our brain produces chemical signals that increase adrenaline and cortisol in our blood.
These two stress hormones are made and released by adrenal glands located next to our kidneys.
Adrenaline increases our heart rate, breathing rate, carbohydrate metabolism so that we can use energy quickly if we need to run away.
Cortisol gets sugar into the bloodstream by increasing its production so that our brain can use enough energy to get us out of mess.
Cortisol also sends a message to the rest of our body systems like digestive, reproductive, and immune systems not to use much energy.
This looks normal in an any emergency situation but under chronic stress, these effects on body systems become serious.
Stress brings anxiety or panic attacks and that eventually leads to hyperventilation.
This happens to a high rate of breathing and oxygen consumption in blood.
Hypertension, heart attack, and stroke are common due to increase in heart rate and blood pressure.
Heartburn, reflex, bloating, constipation are common due to interference with the normal release of digestive enzymes.
Depression and anxiety are also due to fewer immune cells being made.
Stress hormones increase risk of diabetes, decrease sperm formation, decrease testosterone in men, change in menstrual cycle, and worsen PMS symptoms in women.
Difficulty sleeping, inability to pay attention, memory problems, learning difficulties, mood swings, irritability are other problems of excess stress hormones.
Stress hormones have a huge effect on our brain.
The amygdala, the part of our brain that controls fear gradually enlarges, and the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, the memory and decision making points, gradually shrink.
One fact is that some people are more susceptible to stress and others are more resilient.
Our response to stress is encoded in our own DNA, an inherited factor, that determines our capacity for resilience.
Our response factor is also dependent on epigenetic and environmental factors which affect our gene expression.
Stress and irritable bowel syndrome
Stress has a very bad negative effect especially for people with IBS, irritable bowel syndrome.
One reasons I wrote about IBS and stress together is personal. One of my family members has been suffering from IBS for a long time, so I did some research and found out that stress has severe implications for IBS patients.
This disease can only be cured by lifestyle change and diet selection. This is my personal experience from my family.
IBS is a chronic gastrointestinal disorder characterized by abdominal pain and change in bowel habits.
Dr. William Chey, MD, professor of gastroenterology at University of Michigan, says “The symptoms of IBS are triggered mainly by two reasons: food and stress.”
For IBS patients, stress can damage the interactions between the brain and gut.
Stress results in overactivity or underactivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis along with autonomic nervous, metabolic, and immune systems.
Stress increases intestinal permeability also called gut leakiness.
This leakiness allows potentially harmful toxins into the bloodstream which increases IBS complications and GI pain.
Stress can alter the secretions and movement of the intestine due to slow down or speed up bowel transit causing pain, constipation, and diarrhea.
Stress increases visceral hypersensitivity that leads to bloating and abdominal pain and worsen the bowel urgency.
Dr. Megan Riehl, PsyD, GI Psychologist and author of “Mind Your Gut” says “Stress changes the stress hormone level and alters the bacterial composition in the gut.”
Our gut microbes have the capacity to upregulate stress responses and increase the risk of depression.
The gut microbes affected by stress can alter mood and eating behaviour.
They trigger cravings for highly processed and flavored foods containing processed carbohydrates, sodium, and fats.
Conclusion
There are hundreds of reasons why you should be healthy and stress free because when you become healthy and stress free then you can become anything and offer anything in this world.
This is the power of a healthy body.
Having good health and stress free life frees up a huge amount of mental space.
Instead of having most of our brain occupied by only our problems like how we’re going to get rid of this illness; all of that mental space is utilized to focus on other things like how we’re going to contribute to change this world.
So my advice to all of you is this:
Visualize your life as a series of stories that gives you a chance to take a step back, look at the whole picture, and try to develop a new perspective of your life.
Take a few deep breaths because that recruits our nervous system to help you return to the present moment.
My dear friend, there are mainly three kinds of mind that operate our body: emotional, rational, and wise.
Most of the time we use our emotional mind, and very few times we use our rational mind.
What we have to do is we have to use with a wise mind most of the time because this mind is in the center of rationality and emotion.
We have to think bigger picture and investigate problems from many corners of our lives to balance emotional and rational mindset.
So my friend, start to use a wise mind by adopting a small habit change and do it everyday as a prioritized routine work same like your everyday software development work: (1) Five minutes of breath work and meditation for mental exercise (2) Move your body for fifteen minutes for physical exercise, and (3) Eat a healthy diet mainly plant based food for positive energy.
Your work stress will gradually go away, it will not go overnight but eventually will go away, you will feel it, but only if you stick with your habit. This is my personal experience from my family.
Dr. Kelly McGonigal, PhD, a research psychologist and author of “The Joy of Movement”says “Go after what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows.”
If you have a few minutes, please watch Dr. Kelly McGonigal’s TedTalk: “How to make stress your friend?”
Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.