Stress - the silent killer!

Stress, the ultimate precursor we all suffer that goes unnoticed and lands us up in the established diseases that most adults identify themselves with in hospital walls and add prescription drugs and self injections to lead the ’so called normal life’.

We all should be a business man, bring the calculative mind to the fore and sort this out, the calories, the sugars and the diet we miscalculate and binge on in early years definitely comes back to haunt with a wide spectrum of A-Z diseases a decade or two later or even earlier depending upon the genetic model of ours.

People often self brand that they are stressed after a day of heavy work or when something unusual has happened and when it bothers a lot. But not at all times it doesn’t just go away with a good night sleep. Depending on the richter of it and the frequency of it happening over a period of time, it keeps on piling up on the inside. If the stress that you imbibed is of a non-trivial thing, then with proper relaxation, taking your mind of what caused it, will surely help in soothening it and make it disappear. But if that stress is emanating of something chronic of nature and its been there for a while and is bound to be there for a while, then if you ain’t approaching this issue head on and sort it out, its gonna be there for a while.

Stress is an effect of anything that happened or is about to happen that alters the normalcy of your body. Not necessarily what has happened in the past, or what is happening in the present day causes stress, also what might happen in the future, the due date for a payment or a supposed day of examination that you are about to take can instill stress in you. Stress is not all bad, like it shouldnt ever happen. Stress is good when it brings about progressive growth in you as a person or a student who sweats 10 hours a day with their books to overcome the upcoming examination.

Whenever, anything that bothers you and you perceive it through your eyes, ears or just think about it, it without happening, it activates various centers in your brain and signals are communicated to the processing center in brain and required actions are taken. whenever stress signals are percieved, your body stops all long term nutrient depositions and makes your body ready to perform at its best by making available all the nutrients available in blood. For example, when you see a dog chasing you, you automatically feel a rush of adrenaline and energy to flee off the scene, you will be running for your life and all this is made possible by making your body stacked up with resources for the immediate energy breakdown and work. All this is possible due to stress interpretation. If you made out of the danger from the dog, the stress signals are not produced and your body reverts back to long term deposition of these nutrients (Carbs, protein and fat).

Stressor can be anything, from a little pin prick on your forefinger to a giant boulder falling onto your shoulders, even a little cloggy thought your girl friend didn’t text you back properly. There aint specializations or software updates like in your ever-changing phone models to process each and every detail to the core. So whatever that bothers you, may it be physical or emotional, knocks same center in your brain and all the signals are perceived the same. So just to lighten the mood more about this, clinging onto a worrying thought for minutes to hours, that we do when something major heartbreak has happened is almost the same pain as in trivial trauma that you are getting self inflicted with a sharp edged object or anything that physically hurts. A wound is evident in a physical inflict and we tend to attend to it ASAP and get it healed because we see it daily via our very own eyes and ofcourse the numerous eyes on us in our household that watches our tiny little changes in us, so one way or the other we tend to get the required medical attention and get it healed. So mostly we pay attention to the outside world, we never try to get something get healed or seek required medical attention or advise to heal the ones that is ever present on the inside, ofcourse im hinting about the mental distress that we hold dear to ourselves and try soothening it out with songs, distractions on the outside in any format you can name: going to cinema halls, playing football on a Sunday, hitting the bars downtown and dancing your worries off. All these are just temporary solutions to soothen your mind, an example would be perfect to strike the chord to make you understand this : A prostitute. Whatever that takes your mind for just a period of time is worth the time you spent or the money, but It never heals you on the inside. Ok what else is gonna heal this that is omnipresent on the inside and to this question, the answer is simple. Make peace with yourself about whatever issue that’s crippling on the inside and it can be one or more factors clubbed together of million causes: Losing a dear friend, A Gf cheating on you, a business downfall that blew away all your savings, a very dear one diseased and is no more, bullying and sexual harassments or even a simple discouragement from your parents on your poor academic or habits.

A word of caution, im not summarizing it to never take it to your heart and be a stone cold b*****d. Take it in, process it, if its good – cling on or if it’s bad – do what you have to get over it (a gf breaking with you) or make peace with yourself in case of loss of dear ones, coz in the latter aspect you can’t do much about it, Murphy’s law – whatever bad has to happen, will happen. In things you could have changed the outcome of it and you let it off, analyze where you went wrong and try not repeating it again. So to end this initial part of a long monologue about mental health and numerous insights and steps to a happy living yet to come, we can tackle any problem that is manageable by our strengths(mental and physical).If we cant, we sort out help, to fight it off. So if you are not able to get something off your mind, don’t just rely on your friends and family to somehow heal it off magically like they show in movies and stuff. A mental trauma is the same as a physical trauma, just spelled with different words and emotions but the same toll on your inside. So do consult a psychiatrist or a psychologist to atleast have an enhanced insight to the problem of yours.

Im not of an opinon, that distractions never help you heal whatever that’s bothering you on the inside. It does help you 100 % and even for physical trauma as in muscle pains, we apply volini sprays or diclofenac gels (muscle relaxants).

It acts mainly by distraction technique, the little burning sensation that you feel when you apply and the heat produced makes us feel the ointment or liniment or spray is working straightaway bang on !!! But it aint the same mechanism that makes you let go off the pain. The burning sensation is produced by an element known as capsaicin, a product that is seen in red chillies. It creates a distraction to the ongoing pain on the inside and make you aware of this burning sensation on the skin where you applied and this alleviates your pain in an indirect way.

The initial burning sensation buys the time for actual product – diclofenac to treat sore muscle and muscle spasms to kick in and treat the underlying cause. If it wasn’t just a sore, if there is some systemic cause, the pain recurs after the effect of the muscle relaxant woes off! In this case, only if we treat the underlying cause, we can treat the ailment properly and make the person healthy. So obviously we have an appointment at a GP’s clinic and get it sorted out

So in same way, if the mental trauma that you are having doesn’t go off with all the temporary distractions that you can name like, watching a movie, hearing songs, playing your favorite sports or video games, hanging out with your BFF’s or eating your heart out at your favorite restaurants then its time to look in deeper for the problem and consult it with a psychiatrsist or a psychologist and not necesarrily you should take anti-psychotics or mood stabilizers to get yourself back going normal. A simple consult with experienced psychiatrists and psychologists can help you perceive things better and the way they put questions to your problems from a neutral side and in a non-judging manner with patient confidentiality can reap you much help in this aspect.

And to those people wondering how these simple distractions woes off your mental trauma for a limited period, its mainly cause of dopamine and will explore about dopamine in the next part of this write-up, until then I bid adieu !

                                                  -Dr.Ajit Kumar
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