Diseases of derivatives

1995/11/01 Agirre, Jabier - Medikua eta OEEko kidea Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Osasuna

His life is a constant struggle against the passage of hours, against others and even against oneself; he calms the bites of hunger with a snack at noon, often without looking between papers; or vice versa, he solves his dealings with customers with heavy meals, with abundant food; he sleeps little and, in the cases in which he burns, with the cigarette of who has almost finished a cigarette. In contrast to this huge energy expenditure that usually demands praise and success, the executive must pay a high price: heart attack, ulcer, etc., especially for stress. These are the risks you face.

Risk of heart attack

Influenced by a lifestyle characterized by hypertension and obesity, stress, tobacco and alcohol, behavior against angina, brain and forest accident, lung cancer and gastroduodenal ulcer is very stimulating.

Of all these possible combinations, coronary risk, addition to work and depression are the three yoke crosses. These are the keys to a terrible statistic that twenty years ago generated a great concern among doctors, spread throughout the world as an epidemic: four out of ten men of fifty years of this profile did not reach the age of 65, retirement age. At present, however, preventive measures have allowed the survival curve and life expectancy to increase considerably between drives.

High cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, smoking, sedentary lifestyle and obesity, caused by inadequate and unbalanced diet, are the reasons why compulsives affect such a high percentage of coronary diseases. And to understand this prevalence of myocardial infarction, it must be taken into account that the performance of the position is included as a drug, with the anxiety, tension and insecurity that this entails.

Stress, a tough rival

However, the worst enemy of shareholders is stress. This component is essential and necessary in the course of life, in order to maintain an internal balance in the face of a situation of external threat (this threat can be both a trauma and an infection, as a work or family disorder). However, the stress that can be positive in a neutral state is currently introduced in the black strip, associated with this situation of anxiety, tension, tachycardia, loneliness and instability.

Excess stress, that is, the tension situation of the body that is forced to start its defenses in the world of drives and management personnel, can cause very serious personality changes until reaching suicide. In any case, it is a very clear risk factor in drives.

Stress syndrome is not repeated, but develops in several phases:

• The alarm reaction is the first, lasts a few seconds, so the person is paralyzed (neurophysiologists call him a state of shock). This phase reduces muscle tone, blood pressure and body temperature. Sugar, chlorine, and sodium are also reduced, and finally cholesterol, potassium, and fatty acids increase.
• In the contrashock phase the pulse accelerates, the heart pumps blood at a fast pace, increases breathing speed, increases the supply of oxygen and sugar to the organs and increases the level of blood glucose.

Stress, as a defensive mechanism, consists of a similar capacity in the nervous system and in the glands of internal secretion. The aggressions provoke both central and peripheral reactions to maintain the stability of the internal environment. Oxygen and nutrients target the central nerve and attack site, increase heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate, release glucose and metabolize fats. All this to obtain more substances necessary for the fight or escape.

On the other hand, defenses are reduced. When the alarm goes on, norepinephrine, the fighting hormone, and the skin of the pituitary adrenal glands secrete the cortisol axis, the second stress hormone.

• Below is the resistance phase, with two options: recover the lost balance or move to the exhaustion phase. It is said then that this person is “burned”, that is, when chronic fatigue and exhaustion symptoms predominate, even at rest and after sleep; inrelaxation and irreversibility of work; energy and lack of motivation; insomnia, headache, back pain, tachycardia, sweats, wet hands; phobias to specific places and situations, purity and obsession by order.

Stress, both physical and psychological, causes fatigue and body wear, which causes an accelerated aging and a worsening of health, and the final consequence is the launch of several diseases.

Gastro-duodenal ulcer

Stomach ulcer and duodenum, which suffers one in twenty people, is the disease most identified with stress and best identified. But the biochemical alteration associated with stress (with ALTH and abundant cortisol secretion) also causes other diseases: mental anorexia, anxiety crisis, premenstrual tension, hyperthyroidism, depressive states with insomnia, etc. In addition, a series of studies are underway on the possible incidence of stress in ulcerative colitis and bronchial asthma.

What to do, therefore, against stress?

From a pharmacological point of view, the harmful effects of this disease in the procesives have led to the emergence in recent years of numerous drugs to fight the post-stress situation. Among them, magnesium, a peptide very similar to that produced by the brain during sleep, and another peptide that blocks the damage caused by stress at the level of its receptors.

Along with these antidotes, rest, holidays and special studies must be used to avoid replacing the stress that this situation has caused by another: their personal and work relationships and learn to restructure their self-esteem). This type of “courses” are taught in the special summer colonies.

If the executive combines the reconduction of stress with the change in eating habits, it will make a great preventive advance in the fight against coronary and cardiovascular diseases. When the drive is fed in a tensional state, without properly chewing and without performing a real psychic and physical rest, it produces alterations of the secretion and stomach and intestinal movements, which results in gastritis, heavy digestions, abdominal pain and alterations of the intestinal emptying.

Less fat and less salt: there is the key against arteriosclerosis (and do not forget its relationship with hypertension, diabetes, obesity and blood fats, cholesterol). Needless to say, you should avoid or at least reduce tobacco and alcohol consumption.