Times have changed. The advancement in science and technology has had a huge impact on our lifestyles. From the moment we wake up in the morning, we remain under constant pressure. The first thought that crosses one’s mind is not to get late for work or for that important meeting with the manager.
The story never ends, just before leaving for work, your wife would remind you to pay the bills and of course not to forget shopping for groceries on your way home. Once you are in the car, the nerve-racking experience would begin; you need to dodge as many accidents and lousy drivers as possible so you can reach office safely, or with the least possible damages!
And when the time comes and you step into the office, it is the time for endless deadlines, meetings, and hectic debates and decisions you need to make on the fly. Let us admit it, modern life is stressful.
The funny thing is that most of us gets so overwhelmed and immersed in these life “stressors” to the point we no longer think of them as abnormal events. They simply become part of our life.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Life has its ups and downs, bright and gloomy days but if you think about it, most of these stressors are of our own making. Our adaptation to a hectic lifestyle where everything is kept to the last minute, where there is no planning but plenty of overthinking and fears of the unknown. While our bodies were created to deal with short-term stresses, leading a life full of stress affects our health and results in diabetes, hypertension and heart diseases. Stress hormones usually trigger the liver to release more sugar in the blood increasing the risk of diabetes. Abnormal breathing patterns usually associated with stress increase the chances of upper-respiratory infections, let alone elevated blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Add that to the cultural norms where there is no interest in sports and a wide acceptance of unhealthy cuisines and you would end up with a society that is living a stressful life full of chronic diseases.
It is correct that we can no longer resist the wave of globalization and the resultant problems like stress but the concepts of stress management and work-life balance are still unknown in our part of the world. “The level of mental stress has gone up to an unprecedented level during the last 40 years under the impact of major changes in Saudi society,” said Abdullah Al-Subaie, one of the key researchers supervising the first Saudi national health and stress survey back in 2013.
“As a result, Saudis are facing psychological and other health problems pushing up the cost of health care,” Al-Subaie said at the launch of the second phase of the survey.
And I have no idea what happened to this major initiative that started in 2013 and aimed at estimating the percentage of health disorders in the different regions of the Kingdom and to measure the magnitude of the problem, as well as methods of treatment and obstacles that prevent access to medical care. I tried to find any news about its progress or results and unfortunately could not find any. I really hope that such issues would someday attract public attention and we could devise ways to deal with this issue effectively.
