IT’S Monday morning and you’re racing to work in a traffic-snarled city. A quick glance at your wristwatch and you realise you are already way behind time.
As you approach the last junction before turning into the road that leads to your office, a policeman suddenly waves at you to stop to give way to an excruciatingly long convoy of traffic.
You finally stumble into office to find your boss furious. The report you have been working on was due two hours ago.
You’re told to come up with a good explanation or you can kiss your promotion prospects for the year goodbye.
You eye a paperweight and think of hurling it at your oppressor. Instead, you choose to sit down as your stomach churns, sweat flows and blood pressure rises.
The compulsion to react in the presence of stress has been with us since our ancient ancestors. In response to impending danger, their muscles became primed, their attention focused, and their nerves became ready for action – “fight or flight”.
But in the hustle and bustle of today’s life, although the body constantly primes itself to fight, it seldom has to ward off real physical attacks.
Take a situation where you are driving in a city. At every traffic light that you are trying to beat, there’ll surely be a moment of stress where your body primes itself as though to react to something.
But the fact that you are simply sitting in your car makes the elaborate internal preparations superfluous.
Similarly, while standing frustrated in a supermarket checkout line, the stress-related chemicals, fats and glucose, collectively referred to as stressors, are being continuously fired although you are not engaging in muscular exercise.
The elevated heartbeat and the released stressors let loose in the circulation take their toll on the more vulnerable structures such as the arteries.
This may then lead to complications like heart disease, high-blood pressure, stomach ulcer and cancer.
Beyond these, at the launching of the “Healthy Lifestyle Campaign 2000”, Health Minister Datuk Chua Jui Meng was reported to have attributed social ills like maid and child abuse, domestic violence, road-rage and child abandonment to stress.
As a relatively recent addition to the medical vocabulary, stress is rather difficult to define.
Dr Hans Selye of Montreal who first popularised the word defined it as “the rate of wear and tear in the body”.
Over the last five decades “stress” has become widely used to cover not only predictable physical responses, but also a whole lot of social and psychological stimuli that might provoke such reactions.
So much so that today we assume stress to be synonymous with other conditions such as anxiety or tension.
All in all, we have come to accept that stress, far from being constructive, is potentially damaging.
Actually, science has shown that stress both helps and harms the body. For example, when confronted with a crucial challenge, properly-managed stress responses can provide the extra strength and energy to cope with it.
Thus, it is possible that a person who leads a hectic life may be far less “stressful” than the one trapped in a limited position with no sense of accomplishment.
Furthermore, we all differ in our needs. For some, the fast pace is indeed too fast. But for others it may be just right. This variation may be due to the different ways that we perceive external events.
It, therefore, follows that if we could control the way we perceive things, then we could do much to avoid the harmful consequences of stress.
Stress may become detrimental when it continues for a prolonged period of time. For one, it can badly upset the body’s biochemical balance. Some scientists believe that severe, chronic stress may even speed up the ageing process.
A stressful condition triggers three major systems in the brain that regulate bodily functions. The first is the voluntary nervous system. This system is responsible for our responses toward the stimuli that we constantly receive.
The sight of a tiger prowling in the bush would most likely lead to messages being sent to the muscles so that we should run as fast as possible.
The second system is of the involuntary type. When faced with danger the system is automatically activated. Blood flow to muscles is increased so that they can work harder and faster.
At the same time, the calming branch of the autonomic nervous system monitors the state of the body to prevent it from being put in the overdrive mode for too long. This condition, if left unchecked, could lead to disease.
The third system involved in stress response are the hormones. Major hormones include noradrenalin and cortisol. The role of adrenalin is to keep the body alert.
Cortisol burns glucose to provide energy for the now-active body. That is why when some people are under stress they tend to eat too much and it may cause excessive weight gain.
When cortisol is secreted continually in response to prolonged psychological stress, the results can be devastating.
What determines the way people respond to stress? One contributing factor is behavioural type. A hostile personality tends to secrete higher levels of stress hormones. Therefore, if you are a hostile person, it would help to learn to reduce or avoid anger.
While stress is unavoidable, much more of it is under our control than we realise.
What can we do to manage stress? Firstly, we can make a list of what we do. Divide them into two categories. Concentrate only on the category where you are most likely to succeed.
Everyone needs pride of accomplishment and appreciation by others. If your job fails to provide satisfaction, find an outside activity or volunteer work that does. The support of others can help act as a buffer against stressful situations.
For Muslims, prayers have been shown to be among the best ways of managing stress. Praying five times a day in a self-effacing manner provides a conduit to relax the mind.
For example, the dawn prayer is carried out at a time when the cortisol level is at its peak. This helps to check the morning stress. The early and late afternoon prayers done in between work put one’s feet back on the ground.
Finally, the dusk and evening prayers set the mood for a good night’s sleep. In the wee hours of the morning Muslims are encouraged to perform optional prayers to seek tranquillity of the mind.