This is a tough thing. So they work under stress all the time with a rush of adrenaline and noradrenaline. I have a friend who works on TV animation production, participating in various stages, from story line to CG animation to voice input. He works so hard that he gets just a few hours’ sleep every day for stretches of several months. I always warn him saying, “You’re gonna die in your 40s from metabolic syndrome and a heart attack.” However, he continues to work this way, pouring cups of coffee with milk and sugar into his body, and smoking. Adrenaline and hypoglycemia. These are some of the worst factors affecting your health, and you see this in my friend’s case.
Café latte with sugar, which raises his blood glucose level to a maximum, is a sign that his work has started. Four hours later, however, while 95 percent of his followers on the Internet like his works, he is depressed over some articles which criticize his and he voluntarily picks them up to read. According to his wife, he doesn’t have sufficient meals.
The elevated blood sugar level goes down in one or two hours. Then he drinks sweet coffee again to develop his blood sugar. Then later again, when his blood sugar is rapidly dropping, he goes into a state of depression. A critical article about which he doesn’t care usually makes him depressed. This is a vicious circle. Although his wife prepares well-balanced meals for him, when he is in the state of hyperglycemia shortly after a cup of coffee, he doesn’t have much to eat; he is talking most of the time instead.
His blood sugar is going up and down frequently, and sometimes it goes up as the result of a rush of adrenaline, an adrenal medullary hormone. I repeatedly warn him that he is likely to get diabetes. Usually an adrenaline rush makes you aggressive. In his case, however, while he is nice to everyone with a smile, he feels stressed as he controls his mood, which makes him take out his frustration on his family. I give his wife suggestions such as, “Coffee and tobacco are oxidants. Once your blood gets oxidized, it flows badly and the rack of oxygen in the brain pretty much stimulates your sympathetic nervous system and promotes further rush of adrenaline. Sometimes it leads to constipation, causing inflammation in the body including appendicitis. So I think your husband should take a good amount of vegetables, vegie juice, vitamin C and E.”
The movement of oriental exercises such as yoga and tai chi is different from that of western-style exercises in the way that the former is more effective in balancing the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Those oriental-style exercises work to balance the nervous functions of parasympathetically-innervated depressed persons, bringing them back into normal by stimulating their sympathetic nervous system. On the other hand, for those who are sympathetically- innervated and overstressed aggressive business persons and who drink energy beverages with plenty of caffeine, the exercises stimulate their parasympathetic nervous system, then make them sleep well and stay calm.
The Western-style workouts which are to build your muscles and increase maximal oxygen uptake tend to take you to a sympathetic dominant state; they keep you slim and active. However, don’t you have adrenaline rush feelings too many times in a day? You are nice to outsiders, okay, but do you take the same attitude to your family? Don’t you resort to verbal violence at home where you can reveal yourself? Maybe we should check our own attitudes. Incidentally, I hear that a large majority of gun-related homicides occur at home.
Source：US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics“Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008” http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf