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Amarachi Okeh
A public health physician, Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor, has warned Nigerians with cardiovascular health conditions against spending long periods in traffic jams, noting that it could worsen their health issues.
According to the expert, spending long hours in traffic can cause a lot of stress, adding that, while this type of stress is not good generally, such stress could be very bad for persons managing hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases.
The spending of long hours in traffic, he also noted, can cause blood clots.
Blood clots are gel-like collections of blood that form in a person’s veins or arteries when the blood changes from liquid to partially solid.
Clotting, according to cleveland.com, a medical information site, is a normal function that stops the body from bleeding too much when people get hurt.
The health information site, however, noted that blood clots that form in some places and do not dissolve on their own can be dangerous to health.
The public health expert noted that sitting long in traffic jams and also spending almost long hours sitting daily could be likened to living a sedentary lifestyle which is known to be a contributor to developing cardiovascular diseases.
Speaking with PUNCH HealthWise in an interview, Nsofor, who is also a Senior News Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute, Washington, said, “The prolonged stay in traffic will worsen a person’s hypertension and other heart diseases and another thing that bothers me about people staying longer period in traffic as a public health physician is things like blood clots in the deep veins in the legs. For instance, this may dislodge and be carried to the bloodstream to the lungs or even to the brain causing the person to maybe suffer a stroke.
“The person may also have conditions that will affect the person’s lungs so staying long in traffic is prone to increasing the incidents of people coming down with non-communicable diseases.
“These non-communicable diseases could actually kill you before you even realise you have them, especially hypertension,” he warned
He added that for a person who hasn’t suffered any cardiovascular diseases previously, sitting for hours in traffic also increases the chances of a person developing them.
“People may end up staying six hours daily in traffic to and from work and also spend many hours seated in the office doing work, maybe they spend about 10 hours a day just sitting down so the likelihood of them developing hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases is high,” he said.
He stated further that the tendency for such persons to develop obesity is also high because they are living a sedentary lifestyle by not getting any physical exercise while stuck in traffic or sitting down for hours at work.
He said, “If this is the only choice people have to earn their living, they must as a matter of urgency add physical activity to their lifestyle.
“Let me give you an example: when you get to work, a way to build physical activity into your daily routine could be deciding, during the lunch break, not to eat at a restaurant close to your office.
“You could walk 30 minutes or 15 minutes to your restaurant and walk 15 minutes back.
“When you do that every day, you are getting the World Health Organisation recommended moderate physical activity daily that would help you have better cardiovascular health to stay healthy.”
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