Stress: How does it work and what are its effects a the cellular level and on the general well-being

The number of things that can reduce the life span of an African is depressing: HIV, TB, Malaria famine, war and (unfortunately) etc. The continent’s situation seems at many times over our control. Countries are trying to solve their internal problems, keep up with globalization and the international expectations of better education, health care, and governance. With all the very urgent things to care about certain problems in our lives are left to wait for our upcoming development (dangerously slow though). Those problems, for instance rising stress level, can actually become another factor to reduce our life span even more.

A high number of people with high level of stress is usually correlated to development. In other words more of the most stressed people are found in developed countries. But here, statistics could also be interpreted as developed countries have more people that can pay for a consultation and get diagnosed with high stress level. The same reasons that reduce the life span of the average African could also cause him an expected high stress level. But that is not seen, and by “not seen” I mean not diagnosed, and by “not diagnosed” I mean that there is too little interest on the continent for such issue. However, that won’t take away the real problem that stress is becoming.

Stress has many other affects that go beyond panic attacks over overlapping tests. Stress has been in fact positively correlated to cancer, age related diseases such as Parkinson, weakened immune systems and depression. For these reasons, I think it’s very important that we get the right information about stress and perhaps consider it as an opportunity for research.

Thus, I chose to focus my scientific research journey to understanding how exactly stress works and what its effects are at the cellular level and general well-being. Hopefully I can bring some awareness and interest on the topic!