Читать книгу Unf*ck Yourself, Unf*ck the World - Kagiso Msimango - Страница 9

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

– The Red Queen, in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass

At the turn of the 21st century, Dr James L Wilson wrote a book titled Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome. Considering that Wilson wrote this in 2001, was he not being a little arrogant to declare that Adrenal Fatigue had won an entire century when said century was less than a year old? Well, increasingly, many medical professionals, naturopaths and holistic healers agree with him. Some years into the 21st century, a naturopath by the name of Dr Eric Wood observed, “Never before have humans been under such continual and considerable low to moderate levels of stress for so long, often starting at younger ages than ever before. Unfortunately, the fact is that we are not physiologically made to endure this kind of stress! So, where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us with many people feeling tired, sick, and ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired.’”¹ And so it was that I was rudely set on the path to unfucking myself because of an Adrenal Fatigue diagnosis. You may be on better terms with your adrenal glands than I was, but chances are that modern living has not spared you either. I am glad to share that, as I write, I have received three consecutive tests showing that my adrenals are once again quite happy with me. So if you suspect that you may be sick and tired of being sick and tired, you are in for a treat. This memoir is all about how I continue to unfuck myself.

Modern Homo sapiens are believed to be about 200 000 years old. In that time our bodies and brains have lagged far behind the pace at which our environment has evolved, or some may argue, devolved. Your body is still designed for the old days of hunting and gathering, not traffic and online fraud.

Imagine that it is many thousands of years ago, when humans were still new to the world. Roused by the rays of the early-morning sun sneaking into your cave, you get up to gather some berries for your tribe with your friends, as you do every other day. As you walk around the forest inspecting berries, you notice a field of wild flowers, and wander off on your own to pick some. You become so engrossed in the scents and colours of the blossoms that you let your guard down more than you should. The next thing, you register a dangerous rustling in the nearby bushes. You look up to see an enormous lion, no more than 25 metres away from you. Your mind screams, “Danger!” and your body responds with a surge of hormones produced by your adrenal glands that triggers the fight-or-flight response to kick in, readying you to choose to either fight the predator or run for dear life. Not that I don’t have much faith in you, friend, but irrespective of what you choose, it is unlikely that this whole incident would exceed five minutes. A few minutes into this exciting early-morning adventure, you will either have managed to evade the big kitty or you’ll be resting in pieces. If you’ve succeeded in not meeting your end as free-range cat food, your body will naturally start to shake, literally shaking the trauma from your cells, and you will go off on your merry way. The situation is over. Which is lucky for you, because this way you didn’t meet a gruesome albeit quick end, and you also don’t live in the 21st century where we are all slowly dying from the same thing.

You see, although stress hormones are an amazing ally to have when you are faced with a life-or-death situation, they aren’t really something you want to have coursing through your body for more than a few minutes. The moment you spot the lion, a part of your brain called the amygdala freaks out and sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus, which activates the sympathetic nervous system by shouting, “Help!” to your adrenal glands. The adrenal glands then respond by flooding your system with adrenaline. The adrenaline then starts a chain reaction in your body, designed to save you from the imminent danger. Blood flow is diverted to the muscles in your arms and legs, because you will need extra strength in your limbs to fight or flee. Your digestion will slow down, because in the short term being alive is a tad more important than being well nourished. Your heart rate will increase dramatically, you will receive a shot of extra glucose and fats in your bloodstream to give you a quick energy boost, and the airways in your lungs will dilate so you can take in more oxygen. All this happens in nanoseconds. The freak-out process then moves on to stage two, activating the HPA axis, made up of the hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenal glands, and prompting the release of a cocktail of stress hormones, including cortisol. When the threat passes, the parasympathetic nervous system tells your brain to calm down and systematically shuts the whole thing down. I know this sounds a lot like a biology class, but please stay with me.

I guess the modern-day equivalent of being on a lion’s breakfast menu would be incidents such as car accidents, being mugged or trying to catch a toddler who’s about to tumble down the stairs. Unfortunately, our modern way of life exposes us to something known as “chronic low-level stress”. This kind of stress comes from factors that are not life threatening, such as interest rates, board reports, politics, never-ending deadlines, presentations, reckless drivers, a constant stream of bad news from all over the globe, a slow internet connection, bad service and being stuck in traffic. An unceasing stream of stressors that just doesn’t let up. Of course, 2020 decided to show off and throw a global viral pandemic into the mix. This chronic low-level stress keeps the HPA axis activated, and our bodies were simply not designed to be in this alert state for extended periods. And this, my friend, is how things start to fall apart.

The majority of what generates this chronic low-level stress in us isn’t what will actually kill you. Worrying about them is what is likely to end you, slowly and expensively. It messes up your thyroid and adrenal glands, compromises your immune, digestive and reproductive systems and mental faculties and creates inflammation in the body which increases your chances of getting a host of terminal illnesses, and other terrible inconveniences, such as strokes and heart attacks.

In short, “normal” life is killing us.