The World Health Organisation (WHO) said stress has become a ‘World Wide Epidemic’, saying the effect of stress on our emotional and physical health can be devastating.
Lifestyle change involves changing long –term habits, typically of eating or physical activity, and maintaining the new behaviour for months or years.
In an interview with BusinessDay, Richard Adebayo, a consultant psychiatrist/clinical psychologist at Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital Yaba, said that lifestyle control can reduce stress.
“Understanding yourself is very important to know your limit, boundaries and when you reach the breaking point of stress and take things easy. You must be able to know when to delegate duties and when to say no to give yourself time to do little things like relaxation,” Adebayo said.
Adebayo said stress is an everyday event that human beings pass through, it can be physical and emotional reactions due to excessive pressure or it can arise when we cannot cope with pressures.
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“Stress has both positive and negative aspect; we need some measures of stress in life for every human achievement either as a push or motivation to accomplish our objectives, aims, plans and goals,” he said.
According to him, there is need for adequate direct measure to curtail stress management, awareness and people need to adopt better lifestyle choice to reduce threat to life expectancy.
Life expectancy in Nigeria is 54.7, female 55.7 and the total life expectancy is 55.2 which give Nigeria a World Life Expectancy ranking of 178, according to the latest WHO data published in 2018.
Adebayo further said that Lifestyle moderation is important to reduce stress, he emphasis on what you eat, drink and what to avoid.
“You do not have to wait till diseases like diabetes, hypertension before getting adjusted. Avoid junks and key into natural fruits and food items with high fibres, vegetables, dieting, mediation, regular exercise, nutrition and especially finding time to rest.
“Physical relaxation is very important, spending time to relax on weekends not working seven days a week, twenty four- seven, it is not proper.”
“If you want to enjoy your life, you must also be able to do something about your lifestyle like making time for physical activity, the benefit of it is to make your mind refresh and also making time for the things you enjoy will go a long way to reduce stress. If you enjoy going to the cinema, meeting friends, allow yourself to do all this.” He said.
However, the expert explained that an individual who is sleeping poorly may also lose appetite because those who are stressed up find it difficult eating.
“Some people use wrong coping strategy, when they are stressed up, they think the best is to smoke cigarettes or take alcohol.”
“Avoid wrong coping strategies, many Nigerians are on the high side. They think smoking cigarettes or taking alcohol will ease them or solve the stress they go through at home and workplace while some people believe that is an escape route to forget problems. But many run into more troubles and are hooked on drugs and alcohol.”
“Coping strategies are very important, but we should not adhere to wrong lifestyles,” he advised.
ANTHONIA OBOKOH
