New studies on stress

There has been a recent increase in gym membership and independent exercise in the Philippines. The running boom of the last three years, coupled with mushrooming gyms offering new kinds of exercise programs is largely a reaction to workplace stress and the explosion of fastfood not just in restaurants, but in convenience stores and small hotels around the country. Basically, people are trying to squeeze more into their day, and sleep, exercise and proper diet are the first casualties. Now, new research is shedding light on just how dangerous stress is.

“Stress is a global epidemic,” says psychiatrist Jeff Brown of Harvard Medical School. “It’s hard to argue when the link between stress and just about every major disease is so well established.”

The National Health Interview Survey points out that in the US, 75 percent of people feel stressed during any two-week period, with half the population reporting moderate to high levels of stress at any given time. The American Medical Association reports that at least 60 percent of all illness can trace its roots back to the adverse effects of stress.

What has been happening? In the Philippines, we have been experiencing the same kind of “progress” as in many other countries. The BPO industry has a big chunk of the population sleeping in reverse to service clients in other time zones in the US and Europe. Traffic is a constant obstacle. The proliferation of smart phones and other devices has given us the capacity to multi-task, doing more things at the same time. Leading training companies worldwide offer programs designed to manage stress brought about by the need to multitask. Some of the trends noted include far-reaching globalization, demand for higher productivity, unpredictable competition from more sources, changing customer demands, and balancing cost-management with business growth, among others. All in all, it is not a healthy set-up.

The University of London conducted a 20-year study and concluded that stress is a bigger danger to lead you to cancer or heart disease than either smoking or high-cholesterol food. The US is starting to feel the economic effects of this, as well. Each year, American companies are spending about $300 billion to address health and insurance claims, lost productivity and missed work. Some states have reported a 700 percent increase in workers compensation claims over the last 30 years. This roughly coincides with the spread of the Internet and the spike in mobile technology.

Ironically, our tendency to take on more and more work has reached the point of diminishing returns. When you hit a high level of stress, for example, your brain and body start to shut down, even if you’re trying to fight the stress with exercise. In extreme cases, your heart rate reaches a certain level that triggers parts of your brain to shut down, leaving you with the mental decision-making capacity equivalent to that of a dog. In threatening situations like fear of failing in an important project or fear of losing your job, your body also draws blood away from your extremities to protect your vital organs. It can even involuntarily release bodily fluids, resulting in some very embarrassing situations.

One of the biggest problems of modern society is taking on more and more work, which we have labeled “multitasking”. Scientific evidence actually shows it’s counterproductive, and inevitably can render us incapable to doing complex work.

“Scientists estimate that each time you switch from one task to another, you more than double the time it takes to complete either task,” Dr. Brown explains in his new book “Say Goodbye to Stress”. “And multitasking really does ratchet up stress levels. The brain responds to task-and-information overload by pumping out more adrenaline and other stress hormones that contribute to the feeling of agitation and edginess.”

Brown adds that long-term effects of these hormones include headaches, stomach problems and sleep disturbances. Clinical depression and generally poor health also accompany these symptoms. One study showed that 71 percent of white-collar workers feel stressed by the amount of information they have to process while working, while 60 percent feel overwhelmed. The danger there is that the stress may lead to mistakes and resentment, which ultimately hurt the work instead of helping it.

Most people don’t even recognize the symptoms of stress until they are in it, and that awareness alone has major value. Researcher Matthew Lieberman from UCLA discovered that simply straightforwardly recognizing when you feel negative emotions can help you calm down by 50 percent.  But for many people, that is an additional task in itself. But that maybe because we are conditioned to focus on what is immediate and urgent, not necessarily what is important.

Some recommendations are to list down your priorities, and determine which really has an immediate impact on our work, what can be delegated, what is merely “busy work”, and what can wait. Others include detaching from work or even just your phone and computer for 30 minutes to an hour every day. Millions of Filipinos instinctively jump on the opportunity to check on a text message, Twitter feed, e-mail, Facebook comment or other social networking activity. Again, the urgency with which we attend to these unnecessary tasks adds to our stress, instead of relieving it. 

What this writer has found useful is looking back 20 to 30 years ago. People did not need to look at their phones or computers while eating, working out, driving, watching a movie or being with family. Nothing has really changed, except for us becoming more attached to what we do so much, it has changed who we are. All those activities are very healthy without being tainted by the need to stay technologically attached. Try it, you’ll feel the difference.