Trinis, zebras and dividends of 24/7 stress

PAOLO KERNAHAN

IT ISN'T clear why, but we Trinis seem ferociously desperate to grasp the mantle "happiest country in the world." Spoiler alert, we didn't hit the charts this year.

The UN's World Happiness Report is supposed to provide a glimpse at the way people around the world feel about their overall quality of life. Given that the data gatherers didn't include a "blackout drunk in a mossy box drain" category, TT didn't make the cut.

Trinis certainly pride ourselves on being the "happiest" people in the world. We're more likely confusing the most don’t-give-a-damn people in the world with the happiest. Certainly, the random aggression I and many others face every day belies the brittle facade that Trinis are the happy-go-lucky, carefree characters we're aggressively hawking to the rest of the world.

It's impossible to at once lay claim to being the happiest people and at the same time have the worst customer service across the board, with the lone exception being Xtra Foods.

Happy is the last word that comes to mind when called upon to describe us. So many seem so angry all the time it got me thinking about the long-term impact of stress on a population already on a hypertension/diabetes/heart disease timer. People out here are practically constipated with fury.

We're fighting on the beaches, we're fighting in the fields and streets, we're fighting at the KFC drive-through, we will never surrender!

There's a physiological price to be paid for living in a country where citizens are under constant threat of home invasion, carjacking, kidnapping and murder. Many of us try to push it out of our minds, but newspaper headlines are a constant reminder of our grim realities.

The resulting stressors are compounded by another: nothing works in this country. In general, Trinis have accepted dysfunction as part of the bargain of citizenship. We have beautiful beaches, shark and bake, and whatnot, but renewing a permit, passport, or doing any public transaction is designed to trigger the maximum frustration that can be produced – that's the trade-off. All of these factors lead to a general condition on the islands that, in my experience, is anything but easy-going.

Recently I started on a book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. I have to find ways of coping with the everyday stressors of life in general and life in TT in particular. I'm hoping by the end of this book I'll have some actionable steps to bridle my stress response. Otherwise, I think I'm going to lose my...now where did I put that bloody thing?

So far there are some fascinating propositions in the book that pull back the curtain on the ways stress influences ill health.

Using examples of the fight or flight response in the animal kingdom, the author explains the vital role the stress response plays in biology. In the moment where a prey animal, like a zebra, has to escape the clutches of a ravenous lion, it relies on a stress response, like a turbo boost to power the muscles to elude capture.

The stress response is a key function of survival. However, the zebra doesn't mope around the savannah worrying about the potential of lion attacks down the road. It isn't constantly triggering a flow of stress hormones in its body all the time.

Human beings have long since left the savannahs. For the most part (but not entirely) we don't have to fret about escaping predatory animals camouflaged in the tall grass. Still, because of modern lifestyles, many of us are constantly triggering a stress response.

If you're always in stress response mode the book posits that this demonstrably weakens the body's ability to maintain immune defences against serious illness. This is how sustained stress can make us sick. Living in a perpetual, figurative state of fight or flight renders our stress response more harmful to us than the source of the stress.

Additionally, unremitting stress has also been shown to contribute in no small measure to the aging process.

There are few things we can do as individuals to change the socio-economic conditions and failures of governance that foment the dog-eat-dog ethos that's so prevalent here. What we can do is focus on how we react to stressors and how we treat others, notwithstanding the circumstances that lead to such strained lives. This is crucial as the long-term repercussions on our health dramatically erode quality of life. It's easier said than done, but we must aspire to be the zebra, not the jacka–.