Stress in the time of Corona

We transitioned from our daily lives where we saw each other almost everyday without really realizing the kind of privilege it was. A pandemic had to make us realize that even the things that we easily take for granted can be replaced in weeks. The Economist in a recent article stated that: — “Not since the second world war have so many people in so many places been traumatized at once (see article). Even after the disease itself is brought under control, the mental scars will linger.” 1

Humans beings are social animals and are not able to completely cope with immediate changes specially when it involves isolation. Covid19 and subsequently the lockdown forced us to physically (not socially) isolate ourselves from each other so that we could dampen its spread.

All in all, we were faced with some immediate challenges like not being able to go out except for essentials, not being able to come to office and for people having kids, they had to spend a lot of time with them to keep them engaged as schools had to be closed.

Experts are suggesting that as we venture into the wild to claim increased land for agriculture in order to feed the growing population there will be more pandemics. This is because of the close contact we have with new species in the wild, and also since we do not have a concrete way to predict which flu viruses in animals can mutate and infect humans. So, in the future there might be a pandemic in every decade or sooner and I believe we need to develop a better mechanism for being able to isolate ourselves and coping with it for the greater good.

All this isolation and distancing comes at a great cost, i.e. it induces a lot of stress. Assuming that pandemics like these will become more common in the future we need a better way to cope with the indecision it creates.

So, if you excuse my pun of borrowing the heading from a famous Gabriel Garcia Márquez novel, I would want to give you some leads to manage your stress levels in a better way. The first step would be to understand what stress is, why it is not always bad and why it needs to be managed and not be done away with. Then we can go on and follow some of the stress management advice.

What is stress?

There are many definitions of stress but no unequivocal definition. For our purposes we will go with a very simple and practical definition i.e. ‘Stress is the gap between demand and capacity’.

Think about this definition for a moment. Do imminent deadlines make you stressed? Obviously yes! What if you did not stress over it and let the deadlines slip by? Well that would reflect poorly on your professionality, wouldn’t it?

Likewise, parents feel stressed if their child start crying. What would happen if parents did not stress over the crying child? Would the child grow up normally?

The reasons I am probing these simple daily issues is to help the reader understand that stress can be both good and bad. I am sure all of you must have been stressed enough to take your exams seriously enough or else you would have failed and wouldn’t have been employed.

What I am trying to say is that stress is not always bad. It is when you are stressed all the time does it lead to serious health issues.

There are 2 types of stress, i.e. Acute and Chronic stress. Acute stress helps you perform all your routine personal and professional activities like completing your work before deadline, caring for your children and even enjoying a roller coaster ride. Life without stress would be aversively mundane. Robert Sapolsky a professor of Biology at Stanford states — “We love stress that is mild and transient and occurs in a benevolent context. The stressful menace of the roller coaster ride is that it will make us queasy, not that it will decapitate us; it lasts for three minutes, not three days. We love that king of stress, clamor for it, pay to experience it. What do we call that optimum amount of stress? Being engaged, engrossed and challenged. The core of psychological stress is a loss of control and predictability. But in benevolent settings we happily relinquish control and predictability to be challenged by the unexpected — a dip in the roller coaster tracks, a plot twist, a difficult line drive heading our way, an opponent’s unexpected chess move. Surprise me — this is fun”

The brain region responsible for inducing stress is the amygdala. Something interesting to note that people who have had the amygdala removed are incorrigible altruists and trust everyone. There are highly likely to behave ascetically and donate hefty sum of money to charity which could make their own survival difficult. They have also been seen to take large risks during gambling. So acute stress is important to manage our own well-being.

How can we Manage it?

The Now that we understand more about stress, we can be defter at handling it. There are certain clichés which everyone knows to managing stress i.e. meditation, mindfulness, exercise, light and active diet consisting of whole grains, more fruits and vegetables, less meat, dairy and sugary foods. Higher than tolerable sugar and animal proteins have also been linked to diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and even Alzheimer’s.

What also works for me in managing stress is doing what I love. I love reading and playing music, when I feel a little stressed.

I saved the best for the last. What do you think is the best way to manage stress?

The answer is à A good night’s sleep!

Many people including Bill Gates have said that they sleep 7–8 hours. a day. Bill Gates has even said that one of the reasons he is happier how than in his younger was because he sleeps at least 7 hours a day. He also said that he considered sleeping too much to be a sign of indolence. His lack of sleep probably even made him a very irritable person. Watch a Netflix documentary made on him to see the way he used to talk and micromanage his employees during the early days of Microsoft.

To quote the sleep scientist Matthew Walker- “REM sleep is the only time during the twenty-four-hour period when your brain is completely devoid of the anxiety-triggering molecule nor-adrenaline. REM sleep and Dreaming helps to remember the details of those valuable, salient experiences, integrating them with existing knowledge and putting them into autobiographical perspective Dreams help us forget, or dissolve, the visceral, painful emotional charge that had previously been wrapped around those memories.”

Sleeping less than six or seven hours can damage your immune system, double your risk of cancer, increase risk for Alzheimer’s, makes you feel hungry getting you to binge-eat and contributes to all major psychiatric conditions, including depression, anxiety, and suicidality.

If you feel stressed in your workplace, talk to your respective managers or consult a psychiatrist. I would encourage you to share your stress stories and how you managed to handle it with everyone.

One last thing, stress is more contagious than the Covid19 pandemic because it can even spread even if we are physically distant. So, for our own well being we need to ensure and enthusiastically endeavour to help others mange stress. It’s the least we can do.