Stressed and sleepless in Manila

For some people in our nation of 114 million, time is reversed, not a sort of strange and melting clock as in Salvador Dali’s “Persistence of Memory” but totally reversed as in, night becomes day and day is night – past midnight, all through the witching hour and straight on til morning.

I am not referring to the drifters wandering about the nooks and streets of Manila in the dark looking for food or money to get by but the more institutionalized kind, the BPO and call center workers who toil under the moon, be it gibbous, crescent or big, bright and full.

These workers work the night shift as they match eastern time office hours, servicing calls from clients from the US, Europe or anywhere else beyond Asia.

It’s a huge industry. The BPO or business process outsourcing industry, which provides support services to companies from Amazon to Zoom, saw revenue increase last year by 10.3 percent to $32.5 billion, and staff count rise 8.4 percent to 1.57 million, according to NikkeiAsia, citing a report from the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines.

It’s a booming industry indeed and certainly one that is crucial to our economy, but perhaps not enough attention is given to the workers that are at the heart of this sector.

Did you know that even if they sleep when they are off duty, it’s still not as healthy as sleeping during the rest of the population’s sleeping hours?

I’ve known this for some time and have always been worried for some of my friends who work as call center agents.

The good news is that there are ways around it and it’s what I learned after an engaging interview I had with world-renowned US-based stress management expert Dr. Donielle “Doni” Wilson, who will be in Manila and Cebu on Oct. 25 and 27, respectively, for a talk, Master Your Stress, Reset Your Health, as part of The Healthy Options Talks.

The Healthy Options Talks is a series of health and wellness events that feature distinguished experts from around the world, aiming to inspire us to live our fullest and healthiest lives.

Stressors

Dr. Wilson and I talked about what causes stress. It may be something all of us already know because we experience it all the time, as a citizen in our beautifully chaotic country; as a journalist chasing deadlines; as a corporate slave; or as a student surviving the daily school grind.

To put it simply, stress happens when we don’t eat the right food, have adequate sleep, do recovery efforts and proper exercise.

Dr. Wilson talks about her Stress Recovery Protocol, a program specifically designed to calm anxiety, boost energy and beat burnout and she discussed the science of epigenetics and how it’s all connected – cortisol, adrenaline and neurotransmitters, and how we can balance these through Clean eating, Adequate sleep, Recovery and Exercise or the C.A.R.E. program, as she calls it.

Clean eating

Making the right dietary choices helps a lot in managing stress. Are you consuming too much sugar or a high amount of alcohol in your daily life?

“There’s a lot of different ways we can create more stress in our bodies based on how we’re choosing to feed ourselves,” she says.

Adequate sleep

And then there’s adequate sleep. Citing research, Dr. Wilson says that the amount of sleep we need is 7.5 hours. It is also important to sleep at a certain time and follow the circadian rhythm, which is based on living on planet Earth.

“This means it’s better if we’re awake when the lights are out and then we’re sleeping when it’s dark. So, usually we would be sleeping at 10:00 p.m. Our melatonin levels increase because when it’s dark our brain perceives the darkness and makes our sleep hormone called melatonin,” she says.

Thus, for a population of Filipinos who work the night shift, they have to create their own circadian rhythm. They have to have complete darkness so the brain perceives that it is night even when it’s not. This can be fixed using blackout curtains and having really quiet sleeping quarters.

Recovery

Recovery is all about taking breaks in life to recover from stress. It can mean spending some time outdoors, having a pet or taking vacations. Listening to music works too and so does breath work or meditation.

“These are things that we can choose to do sometimes even for 15 minutes. It helps in counteracting the amount of stress we’re exposed to.”

Exercise

The E in C.A.R.E is exercise. Dr. Wilson says it means starting some movement – a walk, a run, a swim or whatever works. One can start with just 15 minutes of exercise a day.

All of these things of course are easier said than done, especially with our individual situations, but we all need to start somewhere.

Now how do we know if we are just feeling a bit stressed or totally stressed out with our lives?

When it feels like treading water – which is exhausting – it’s already so bad, says Dr. Wilson. Instead, she says, we have to actually enjoy riding the waves.

That is perhaps a good question to ask ourselves. Are we just treading the waters and exhausting ourselves in our daily lives or are we actually enjoying the waves or life in general?

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen (Iris Gonzales) on Facebook.