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| Friday, 10 September 2004 |
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Take your pick - 'nice stress' or 'nasty stress'? by Michele Hanson
Why it is that so many of us remain fighting fit until we retire and then promptly descend into ill-health? Out of the blue, just when we need him most, the former United States President, Bill Clinton, is in hospital having undergone a heart bypass surgery. A significant arterial blockage was discovered, possibly caused by too many cheeseburgers and fries in his earlier life. But why would the blockage start to play up now, when he has switched to the low-carbohydrate South Beach Diet, is jogging regularly, and has retired? Could retirement have anything to do with it? Not that Mr. Clinton has really retired. He has just written his memoirs and been on a grand book tour, but scribbling away at home, spending time with his family, must surely be less stressful than being the most powerful man in the world. Before you take your life in your hands and opt for retirement, it might be worth knowing that there are two types of stress: nice stress and nasty stress. Nice stress probably includes ruling the world, earning a fortune, having a tight schedule, knowing what you are doing for every minute of the day, having a purpose, and knowing where and what you are. This is the lovely, buzzy-type of stress the sort that produces a hormone called dehydroepiandro-sterone-S, or DHEA-S for short. This leads to better brain and memory function, strengthens the body's defences, boosts the immune system, improves the complexion and lengthens your life. Nasty stress is the sort that drudges on forever: endless debt, bereavement, relationship breakdown or bullying can bring it on, and this stress will give you high blood pressure, despair, palpitations, headaches, bowel upsets, insomnia and an increase in minor infections. Making a fortune probably gets the DHEA-S flooding out. Have you ever worked like a lunatic for months on end without a day off, then taken a holiday and been poorly for the whole of your time off? It is called leisure sickness and has flu-like symptoms. Again, you have probably left a structured, activity-packed lifestyle for a relatively empty, flopping-on-the-beach-type life, with plenty of time to feel anxious. Peter Nathanson, a successful and tremendously busy location manager on grand films with gigantic budgets and mega-film stars, rises before dawn for months on end, works like a slave, barely sleeps, never takes a day off sick, but is always poorly the minute he goes on holiday. Retirement can be like holidays on a grand scale. Aeons of time to think for the rest of your life. James Tiplady, a stunningly efficient and inspiring music teacher, used to work like a slave as the head of the music department in an inner city comprehensive. I was a newly qualified teacher and he was a living dynamo. And then he decided to make life easier for himself and work part-time in a junior school. He suddenly flipped while playing chess, threw the whole board and pieces into the air, and wandered around in his pyjamas. It was as if an elastic band had finally snapped after years of relentless stretching. And that was only a small step towards retirement. My friend Mavis' Uncle George was defined completely by his job as an eminent lawyer. Shortly after he retired, on his 80th birthday, Alzheimer's kicked in. In a room crowded with 40 birthday guests, he kept asking, "When are the visitors arriving? I mean the real visitors." To Mavis, his sudden decline seemed like the felling of a beautiful tree. "It's the way you retire that does it," says Mavis. She herself was sacked ignominiously and unfairly and almost immediately caught pneumonia, ending up in hospital for weeks. And look at our own Lady Margaret Thatcher. The last time I saw her on telly, she looked an absolute fright. Since her retirement she seems to have crumpled and gone even battier. All those years of intensive working and bossing and barely any sleep. What was she going to do with all that energy once she had retired? A drastic change is probably asking for trouble. "It's a great shock if you've been working and you go to nothing," says British journalist, Joan Bakewell, still writing and broadcasting at the age of 71. "You go from a solid income to no credibility, no place to go to every day. All your responsibility is taken away, you lose a major role, you have no identity. As freelancers, we avoid all this, but we need some sort of structure: charity work, book group, grandchildren." It is perhaps not a good idea to go at retirement like a tank, roaring into fitness regimes, extreme sports, thrilling cruises and fierce diets. Ms. Bakewell would not advise fierce jogging, and remembers President Jimmy Carter, who jogged seriously, looked rather pasty and nearly fainted. I'd prefer to hang on a bit longer, and have managed to smooth the change from work to retirement by not really doing either properly. I did one year of solid five-day-a-week teaching, cut it down to four days a week, couldn't imagine how I had managed five, continued to decrease my days of work until they were two and a half day's teaching, plus one as a street trader, and now here I am, diddling along, not really retiring. Hopefully Bill Clinton will recover and even get back on to the campaign trail again. So take it easy, Bill, but not too easy. We still need you. (Courtesy - The Hindu) |
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