By Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, MD

I was overjoyed to learn a couple of days ago that Dr. M.A. Saleem, the DG&IG of our Police Force, has announced that all our cops will henceforth become eligible to get leave on priority, to celebrate their birthdays and anniversaries, with their families.

Nothing else could have been a better or more well-deserved gift to these hard-working and often badly overworked souls than this little gesture of love and sensitivity, coming from a man heading their fraternity.

I say this because for almost all the men and women serving us in their Khaki uniforms, their personal lives get the least or even next-to-no priority. And, this is not because they cannot be given some rest and relief, by efficiently distributing their work schedules but mostly because there never has been in place a system to ensure this, largely due to the fact that so far, no one had given even a passing thought to it. 

Thankfully someone has now thought of it. And, why should I, of all persons, who is not even remotely related to or associated with the Police Department, be writing about how good it is, is only because I happen to be a practicing doctor.

Day in and day out, in the course of my routine work, I get to see many Police personnel as my patients. And, what strikes me as most unique and which sets them apart from most other patients, is that almost all their health problems and the rather poor state of their general health is due to plain stress, both physical and mental. They hardly have the time to pay any attention to this very important aspect of their lives because of some very peculiar circumstances that relentlessly drive their lives.

Firstly, they serve in a very demanding department, which is perpetually overburdened with work but badly understaffed to cope with it efficiently. Secondly, their work culture is such that every subordinate, from the lowest to the highest, is always duty-bound to obey orders implicitly, irrespective of whether they can do it comfortably or not. Doing their duty always comes first and everything else comes only after this. Although this is exactly the work culture that exists in all the armed forces too, across the world, thankfully they are not constantly overburdened with work and understaffed, although they certainly do have gruelling times that can be very demanding and even dangerous.

The mitigating factor to note here is that they are not under pressure, all through their working lives. The third and perhaps most important reason that generates the maximum stress in Police personnel, is the abysmally poor quality of family life they lead, thanks to the very little time they have for interaction with their family members. Let alone for attending other family functions and celebrations, most of our hard-working Police personnel do not have time to celebrate their own birthdays and anniversaries with their own family members.

For any person to stay healthy, what is required is not merely the absence of disease but the presence of some kind of relaxation, on a regular basis. Take this away and you have the perfect recipe to make any person’s life miserable and that is exactly what has been happening so far. It is an established fact that a few of the most prevalent and most dangerous lifestyle diseases, like diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic gastritis, paralytic strokes and heart attacks are directly related to stress.

Ask any doctor what he or she sees most in practice and these are the diseases that stand at the forefront of the answer. But very often, while treating them, even most doctors are not able to pin the blame on the element of stress that brings them on.

Again, this is often because we doctors too, busy with our own work schedules, quickly proceed straight to the treatment of the ailments, without spending some time to talk to our patients about the good and the bad, they have in their lives. But in doing so, we are only temporarily dousing the frequent fires, without also eliminating the actual causes behind them.

While in medical college, nearly fifty years ago, ulcers in the stomach, induced by the excess secretion of the hydrochloric acid that kick-starts the digestive process, were a very common occurrence in most cases of what we then used to call Acid Peptic Disease.

Acid Peptic Disease is still just as common or perhaps even more, although we now call its many variants by many different high-sounding names, but ulcers in the stomach are not very common or much of a problem today. This is only because we have some very good medicines that can effectively suppress the excessive acid secretion that causes them.

But back then, such medicines were not available and the only way to treat stomach ulcers was to perform a rather drastic, major operation called Gastro-Jejunostomy that lessened the contact area between the acid and the ulcers, while nature did the actual healing.

Dr. S.S. Hussain, an emeritus professor who taught us surgery and who was one of the best surgeons in performing this operation, used to always stress in his classes: “Stress is the most important cause for Acid Peptic Disease and these ulcers. So, if you find a small ulcer in the stomach of your patient, always look carefully for a large ulcer in the mind!”

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Even today, it is this large ulcer in the mind, that we have to look for and eliminate, if we have to eliminate a good many of the diseases that plague the lives of our Police personnel.

This is the only approach that works and thankfully we may all begin to see it working, very soon! e-mail: [email protected]