Chronic Stress, Sounds Simple but Deadly

In this country Nigeria, almost everybody has something going on in their mind. There is always a scarcity of money in the hands of 70% of the population so all times people are always worried, thinking about how they will navigate the next moment and survive but funny enough, they survive either suffering through the moment or narrowly escaping to wait for another narrow escape for the next moment. It is in this light that a friend of mine has been worrying himself over a JAPA syndrome that has been going round in the country.

This friend of mine needed about 40 million Naira to perfect his JAPA dreams with the intention of his wife schooling while he works to take care of the family. She intends to do her masters and then a PhD, followed by another course then a Job. At the end of it, he expects that they would have become citizens of the country after staying for s many years and getting the residential and work permit for a start that would allow him stay but the problem before him was the 40 million Naira. The money didn't include flight ticket so he was worried. where was he going to see about $30,000 USD?

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From the day he heard the amount he needed to travel abroad, it looked like the entire world was on his shoulder. He became easily irritated, having pain both in the chest and on his back, soon he explained to me that he was becoming tired more often, and wasn't sleeping well. He had to work and look for where to find the money but at this point, I was forced to tell him that at the pace at which he was going, he was soon going to end up 6ft below the ground and not in the UK because he was already experiencing chronic stress, and it was killing him gradually.

Before you start to ask if stress is a good thing or a bad thing, let me explain. There are two sides to the story of stress where one has to do with normal stress in the body where the body goes into fight or flight mode. The body will usually experience stress when it has to do with survival especially at the point of running or fighting back. This condition will cause the heart to beat faster, the skeletal muscles to contract and prepare for the next action, narrowing of the eyes and in some case sweaty palm or body. This are sign of simple stress that are not bad for the body but then, the problem begins when it is consistent and becomes chronic.

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The body releases cortisol and adrenaline during stress where cortisol increases the glucose in the blood, while adrenaline increases the heart rate. Stress is the body's way of responding to pressure which could be physical, mental, or emotional. The human body is designed to see anything that demands effort or looks like a threat to it as stress and when the body sees this, it begins to respond by releasing the chemicals or hormones I mentioned above so we can prepared for the stress.

This chronic stress can lead to a whole host of things including depression, irritability, inability to sleep as a result of being at the state of alert all the time thereby making it difficult for the body repair worn out tissues and heal itself, soon it begins to affect memory. Stress will also increase the amount of gastric acid being produced in the stomach and this can lead to stomach ulcers, and reflux of the acids can lead to heartburn.

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With a consistent release of cortisol and adrenaline, the blood pressure continuously increases which can lead to hypertension which put the person at risk of a heart attack. While stress is not always put in the lime light, it does a lot of damage that we can think off. Since chronic stress causes sugar to be released into the blood continuously, it can lead to diabetes. Funny enough, when a person is suffering from chronic stress, the body agrees that the reproductive organ isn't important and this is why male who are stressed suffer from erectile dysfunction and fertility problem generally.

You see, that stress that you are causing your body to go through is doing far more damage than you would imagine. Just one word "STRESS" will do a lot of health damage that you would think, so when next you have that weight over your chest, remember that your health is at risk as well.

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Reference

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https://www.apa.org/topics/stress/chronic
https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/chronic_stress_and_how_to_manage_it
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5137920/
https://www.apa.org/topics/stress/body
https://www.apa.org/topics/stress/health
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7603890/
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2020/02/04/chronic-stress-can-cause-heart-trouble
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4747324/