Ngozi is an excellent worker with a magnetic personality. Three years ago, she got the job she’d been hoping to land for a long time. Since then, it’s been computers all day, this wicked thing called ‘deliverables’, and a growing team to manage. It’s the kind of work that follows you home, the kind you can do on your phone, and is still there when you wake up.

She’s good at her job, but lately she has not been feeling well. It started with her getting less and less sleep at night. She would wake up at 3 am, and her brain would refuse to go back to bed. Then her neck started hurting, and then came the headaches, which she had always had on and off, but not like this. The thing that worries her the most? Malaria.

She’s been treating this thing every month for the past year. Her life did not look like this before the job. Her mother suspects her very envious great Aunt in the village, who has never bothered to address the allegations of witchcraft. What more proof do you need? Ngozi doesn’t want to hear it. She thinks it’s stress, and she’s not wrong, but she might not be seeing the full picture.

What stress actually does to your body

When you feel threatened, your body releases a hormone called cortisol. It’s like an emergency response system that supports fight-or-flight. It increases your heart rate, activates your muscles, and sharpens your senses. The system is very good at what it was designed for: helping you survive a short, specific threat.

The problem is that it was not designed for the threats of modern life, like a work notification at 11 pm about ‘deliverables’. Every alert, email, or piece of news you scroll past triggers a small threat response. Individually, none of them is a problem, but dozens per day add up. Modern threats are neither short nor specific, and the result is a body and mind that never fully relax.

Over time, this can affect your immune system. Too much cortisol weakens the cells your body uses to fight infections. It makes you more likely to get sick, and when you do get sick, it takes longer to get better.

In a city like Port Harcourt, where mosquitoes do not take days off, a suppressed immune system is risky business. Ngozi’s body is less equipped to resist malaria than before, and she can tell.

Yes, the job stress is part of the problem, but there’s more.

What no one tells you when you start a desk job

When Ngozi got the job, nobody told her she would spend all of her waking hours on a screen. During her break and after work, she takes out her phone and scrolls through social media to ‘relax’.

Maybe you do too.

The problem is that your nervous system cannot always tell the difference between a work email and a friend’s story. So even after you finish working on your computer and you’re just scrolling through your phone, your body still sees a screen and responds.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news: this is wrecking your sleep.

And it’s not just the blue light thing everyone talks about, though that’s part of it. Screens tell your brain to wake up. You cannot tell your brain it’s time to relax when you’re feeding it with content that makes you think, feel, or react.

Poor sleep raises your cortisol.

It even affects how you process pain, which is why headaches feel sharper when you haven’t slept.

Ngozi is unconsciously carrying two loads: the demanding job and the device she uses to unwind.

This is not about quitting your phone

I’m not telling you to put your phone away all day. I will be a very happy man if you do. But I’ve made peace with both my coconut head and yours. What I am saying is that your body keeps score. It does not separate your work screen from your leisure screen. It does not give you credit for switching apps. It sees content, responds, and pays a price over time for the constant stimulation.

Though the stress from your job is real, the device you use to decompress after that job is almost certainly adding to the bill. And knowing that changes the question. It’s not only about how you manage a demanding job. It’s also about what you do in the hours after you leave the office. It’s about what you’re doing to relax.

So, what helps?

Maybe you can’t stay off the phone all day. But you should put it away for the two hours before you go to bed. This gives your nervous system a window to come down. That is almost 100% guaranteed to improve your sleep, which will lower your cortisol and improve your immunity.

If possible, take it one step further and put your phone in another room at night. Research clearly shows that merely knowing the device is within reach is enough to trap your attention. So it needs to be far away.

Another thing is exercise. Physical movement, even a few minutes a day, over the course of weeks or months, reduces cortisol.

Phone-free time with family and friends each week also helps.

None of these addresses a difficult job. That job may need to change. Often, though, you can control how you deal with the stress. And sometimes that starts with rethinking how you spend your downtime.

The more our communities understand how our bodies actually work, the better the questions we can ask. That is why I write this newsletter every week.