Growing up in India, I remember grandparents helped my parents and aunts with taking care of me and my cousins. I always missed having a similar support living in the US when I became a mother. With busy lifestyle and lack of back up from the family, many young mothers and middle-aged women in our community become the primary caregivers, putting them under a lot of stress. I realized this more during a recent visit to the physician for my yearly checkup. We were casually discussing the busyness of life for women from the South East Asian communities when she expressed her frustration and disappointment on how women in our community do not give priority to personal health in order to meet the timelines of their busy schedules.
Australian biochemist and author Dr. Libby Weaver coined a term Rushing Woman Syndrome to explain the biochemical effects of always being in a hurry and the health consequences in those women who are always in a to-do mode. As per Dr. Weaver’s book Rushing Woman Syndrome, “You know you’ve got RWS if your instinctive answer to ‘how are you?’ is ‘busy’ or ‘stressed’ if you rarely get enough sleep, make poor food choices, rely on coffee to rev you up in the morning and wine to calm you down at night”. Behavior like this causes a “chemical cascade” of the stress hormone cortisol.
In many modern families, the spouses pitch in but due to their work pressure or other reasons the onus of child care and household falls on the women. Many families from the South East Asian communities are culturally groomed in a way that the spouses don’t help much with the household chores.
They may have taken up careers but many women are expected to meet with the expectations like their previous generations have done. The challenges of lifestyle add up when you are living in the US and have minimum support from the family. Many women suffer from weight issues, infertility, diabetes, headaches, thyroid and other stress related diseases early on in their life. More women make poor choice of food, and no regular exercise makes the situation worse. Catching up with the schedule becomes so important that the women do not realize that they are keeping their health at stake.
Meals have to be prepared, kids must be dropped off and picked up, and other schedules have to be followed. Then how can one bring in the change? Well, the answer to that is a little tweak in the habits and lifestyle. Delegation of jobs at home and sneaking time for yourself can bring in the change. Ask kids and spouses to help with the chores, prepare and consume more vegetables and low-calorie diets. Take out time for exercises and indulge in some “me time”. It is rightly said only a healthy woman can make a healthy family.
