The deleterious effects of chronic stress

This week, we will be talking again about inflammation. This is a topic which we discussed on this page about a year ago. The inflammation process constitutes a natural defence mechanism of the body’s immune system.

That sort of defence mechanism responds to injuries, which may be due to trauma, infection and other types of tissue damage. It also refers to toxic substances that can cause injury to different types of tissues around the body.

Finally, it describes the situation that might exist when a person is suffering from an autoimmune disorder. During inflammation, there is a migration of components of the white blood cells to the site of injury.

Certain chemical agents are also manufactured rapidly by the body as part of that response. Besides, different types of specific protein substances participate in the mass migration of cells, chemicals and protein materials to the site of such an injury.

They act on the blood vessels in that area to improve the blood flow to the region and a rush of all of these substances into that zone helps in trying to mitigate the effects of different types of inflammation.

These may be acute, which typically describes short-term episodes that tend to resolve quickly. There is a more insidious type of inflammation described as low-grade. This is usually mildly persistent and always found in a situation made up of obesity and metabolic disorders.

There is a recognition by modern science and human physiology that inflammation therefore plays a critical role in the maintenance of the normal immune and circulatory system.

It is an effective system that plays dynamic roles around the body. One of the most important events anybody who sustains an injury has to be appreciative of is the way we respond to injury and other types of tissue damage.

Sitting astride these important events is the enigma posed by chronic stress. Consequently, the term chronic stress is a combination or a range of adverse relationships, occurring in the body, which ranges from a life of persistent worry to emotional, physical, and financial challenges which all lead to work-related stress and burnout.

These constitute a combustible mixture that contributes to the impairment of the body’s immune system reduction. An impaired immune system promotes the development of diseases of various types.

These diseases are usually non-communicable and are very often associated with a spectrum ranging from chronic poverty, poor nutrition, health poverty, and inadequate access to basic health-promoting infrastructure that can be guaranteed to improve life.

That sort of impairment leads to low-intensity inflammation that can persist for several years before the emergence of certain disease conditions.

Some of these diseases include problems like excessive weight gain associated with an overall status of poor nutrition, obesity, rising incidence of high blood pressure and heart disease, and the prevalence of diabetes mellitus.

For any individual, the management of any of these conditions is challenging enough, especially among those individuals who live in the lower socioeconomic bracket.

This is not an exhaustive list by any means and other problems like asthma and arthritis often have their origins traceable to some inflammatory markers.

However, those are not the only ones affected adversely by these challenges because, among those who live in high-income brackets, many are frequently weighed down by the challenges of managing these conditions.

That is not all; chronic stress serves to impair the memory of those who find themselves trapped in such health circumstances. These people live the kind of life they live as a result of the basic challenges of life in the first place.

That connection helps to increase their risk of developing various forms of dementia. Such levels of stress are also associated with progressively decreasing bone density.

A combination of reduced bone density and weight gain is a recipe for developing musculoskeletal problems, and these will range from problems like arthritis of various large joints around the body such as hips, knees, ankles, and shoulders, as well as the increased acceptability to sustaining fractures.

In addition to all of these, individuals also find themselves trapped in this cycle of constantly increasing misery.

To cap it off, such chronically stressed people also tend to experience an abnormal deposition of abdominal fat and so, individuals who live a life of stress and develop a huge abdomen do not necessarily do so as a result of excessive consumption of alcohol, especially beer.

A pot belly, therefore, is not evidence of affluence but of a hidden cause of worry over the situation of chronic ill health. Individuals who develop all of these attributes become increasingly susceptible to different elements some of which we have mentioned above, but in addition to all of these, there is often the increasing likelihood of worsening insulin resistance, and the increasing amount of glucose, cholesterol, and triglycerides in the blood with the result that many of these people end up developing diabetes, heart and vascular disease, which result from progressive narrowing of the latter.

In such individuals, there is an increased risk of developing hypertension, heart disease, and stroke. That is not all as various individuals also suffer from impaired wound healing.

As a result of that, there is ineffective and inefficient mobilisation of the white blood cells that are often primed to fight off infections and help repair tissue injury.

In addition to this, people who find themselves suffering from these changes also suffer from an increased tendency of the blood to the formation of clots.

Such abnormal blood clotting can lead to strokes, heart disease, and vascular narrowing complications in the lower limbs, the male genital organ, and the eyes.

From a purely psychological point of view, people who find themselves in these sorts of difficulties will often also experience a poor pattern of sleep, which exists to reinforce the vicious cycle that these kinds of problems are bound to represent.

Many of these people often also have a foul mood because they are trapped in these situations whose origins they do not understand. They, therefore, develop an aggressive response to everything that they consider to be unfriendly.

Such a poor mood is a recipe for building fragile relationships, and for ensuring a constantly diminishing profile that often does not compliment the level of the person’s ability or the magnitude of education.

Some of the causes of many non-communicable diseases that exist in our communities today often lie in the presence of the factors we have itemised above.

In the course of the daily struggle for existence, the effect of all these, of course, is that any individual who develops high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease is likely to suffer from significantly reduced life expectancy.

Among the poor majority, who are made poorer daily due to the extremely challenging socio-economic outlook of the country, which means that all of these factors are likely to see an acceleration.

Finally, people who are victims of chronic stress are likely to experience constant body pain, fatigue, and loss of energy in ways that they are unable to determine what the origin is.

In the final analysis, people trapped in these constantly worsening challenges of daily existence tend to have decreased longevity. The reasons for that are not far to seek.

Some of these factors have been explained both in the current and some previous essays which have been published previously on this page. It is therefore the individual’s task to minimise the levels of stress in their lives, live within their economic boundaries, and learn to overlook events in the environment which they cannot change.

For such people, there is a need to answer, very truthfully, the important question about whether they mind their business sufficiently to be free of the stress around them. Coming to terms with such soul-searching would benefit many, many people.

Questions and answers

Good day, sir. I am a 67-year-old man, and I want to know if dates fruit, popularly sold by the northerners, is nutritional for eating and if it won’t cause any harm due to its sugary nature. I eat one date every morning and drink lemon-infused hot water. Thanks for your continuous health enlightenment, sir. May the Lord bless you abundantly in Jesus name. +234 816 831 2XXX

Good evening, sir. Thank you very much for your prayers. If you do not have diabetes, you can take five dates per day. Dates contain a lot of fibre and they are very safe for you to eat. They are friendly to the overall health of your gut.  If you are diabetic, however, you should take three in the morning and two at night. So, if you take only one in the morning and that is all you take in an entire day, you are in safe territory.

Good evening, doctor. Thanks for your usual medical contributions and advice. God bless you. As a 67-year-old man with an O+ blood group, how often can I consume boiled eggs and red meat? Or do you advise me to avoid them completely? Once more, thanks for your contributions to humanity. May the Lord continue to strengthen and uphold you and your family. 08155269XXX

Good day to you, sir. I want to thank you for your very kind words and prayers. You are free to eat red meat, especially lamb, goat meat, and chicken, as well as up to two boiled eggs per day. You can also eat white meat as in rabbits, snails, calamari, and fish. You can eat meat every day as well and with particular reference to goat meat, chicken and snail, you have little reason to worry about any deleterious effects of doing so.

Good day, sir. I am a 61-year-old male, and I have a serious health issue of improper treatment of acute syphilis (been in my body for long) and that of my partner plus prostate which has devastated my body such that I now look very pale and lean. I find it hard to pass stool and my immune system is poor though due to poverty. The test I did in November 2023 shows ‘the prostate gland is moderately enlarged in size with homogeneous echotexture and is generally benign looking. It measures 49.6 cm3 in volume. The capsule is intact. The impression was Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia.’ My blood sugar was RBS~143mg/dl. The urine test showed a moderate growth of bacteria. I had drugs and injections treatment in July this year but no improvement and it seems my body is resistant to antibiotics and I am also experiencing constant objects moving in my body. I urinate frequently and have lost weight. I really fear for my health. Please, which drugs can I take to effectively treat these diseases? I want to get my health back. I really appreciate your kind advice. Thank you and remain blessed. 09166709XXX

Good day to you, sir. To begin with, if you are certain that you have had syphilis for a long time, I am afraid we are dealing with a chronic form of syphilis which is perhaps in its tertiary phase. For this, you and your partner will need the diligent examination of an infectious disease specialist for the proper diagnosis to be made so that you can have the relevant treatment. Secondly, your random blood sugar is higher than normal although not by much and it signifies that you could be in a pre-diabetic stage. This is another reason for you to get a proper examination at the hands of a doctor. As for the size of your prostate, it is not huge. Some others are nearly two times as large but the features you mentioned like excessive passage of urine and moderate growth of bacteria seem to indicate that you probably suffer from a urinary tract infection with a possible background of diabetes. In that circumstance, weight loss is expected and the observation you made that your body has become resistant to antibiotics is fundamentally wrong. What is more likely is that whatever infection you found necessary to treat was not treated with the most effective antibiotics or was not completely treated. The bottom line here is that you need a thorough clinical examination to determine what exactly is wrong with you. When you do that, you will get the proper treatment, and you will stop losing weight.

Good afternoon, Sir. I am 65 years old. I always encounter blood oozing out of my left nose whenever I bend down or bend to ‘Ruku’ during Solat prayers being a Muslim. What can cause it or what do I use to stop it, Sir? May God bless you, Sir. 08069367XXX

Thank you very much for your prayers, sir. The description you used for the event you described is interesting but we get the message; it is unclear how long this has been going on. However, at your age, it is always wiser to examine the more likely causes of a condition before it is considered necessary to recommend some form of treatment. You must get a proper examination from a doctor who may find it necessary to seek the expert opinion of an ear, nose and throat surgeon. There could be a polyp in your left nostril being responsible for this kind of bleeding or it could be something even worse. So, the hospital is the right place to begin the search for answers.

Good morning, Dr. Sylvester! Please, what could be the causes of chronic muscle pulls? Excess muscle pulls? Please can you reply directly to my number, doctor? 08024209XXX

Good day to you. Many readers get their questions answered directly on their phone via a short messaging service. However, there are exceptions to that when the answers material to the question are long and require some explanation. Yours falls into that category. Recurrent muscle pulls can be caused by various factors, which may be physical factors such as the overuse of certain muscles or repetitive strain; poor warm-up or cool-down exercises; muscle imbalances (weak or tight muscles) are seen in people who perform exercises that do not evenly spread the weight or work. There are also issues of poor posture and gait. If you are an athlete, insufficient recovery time between workouts; and increasing training intensity or frequency too quickly can lead to this; inadequate stretching and poor lifting techniques can also contribute to having frequent muscle pulls. Finally, lifestyle habits involving issues of poor nutrition or hydration, inadequate rest and sleep, undue stress or anxiety as well as excessive smoking all contribute to this problem.

Good evening, sir. I am suffering from the roughness of the face. What should I use for it because it is causing me a lot of concern? I have used different creams and ointments on the face but there are no changes yet. Thank you.  07042856XXX

Successful treatment for the kind of thing that you refer to as roughness will depend on the cause. It is important that you get your doctor to examine the face after which they may direct you to a dermatologist. If you have been treating it in the past and on your own, you may have been using the wrong creams or ointments. Therefore, when a doctor tells you what the diagnosis is, it will be possible to properly treat the cause of the roughness.

Good day, doctor. Happy Sunday to you. I have been on painkillers for a week now as my anus is killing me. It has been coming out for the whole week. I have body and waist pains as well as blood in the stool. I have been taking Pilex for it, but it was N9,000 the last time I bought it while Daflon, which I was previously using, was N14,000. What should I do? I am in real misery because apart from paracetamol, I cannot afford to buy any of those drugs. Thank you. 08034307XXX

I sympathise with you. In this kind of situation, though painkillers have their role in helping to reduce the discomfort, it is more important to treat the local problem which is in the anus. You should perform a sitz bath three times a day whereby you add some salt to warm water and sit in it inside a bowl, for 15 to 20 minutes each time. The water should be comfortably warm, but not hot enough to burn your skin and you should experience a gradual reduction of the swelling in the anus and the associated pain. Any woman who has had a baby can always help you with these arrangements since it is not clear what your gender is.