Click to play videoNew Delhi: One of the most essential skills of urban life now days is one's ability to multi-task. It's an evolution that is seen as a virtue, with life becoming more fast paced. Multi-tasking may be highly valued at wok but the human brain is not built for it.
With work loads increasing and technology helping one do more in less time, multi-tasking is the way for most urban people, but it is taking a toll on their heath as well.
Suparna is an architect who runs her own firm and she's a mother of two young boys.
"Most of the time I feel like a juggler or trapeze artist. I'm balancing between being a mother, a wife, a daughter, daughter-in-law, and an architect and a professional," says Suparna.
Without her ability to multi-task quickly and efficiently, her life would crumble.
Dr Manvir Bhatia, a neurologist at Gangaram hospital sets up a simple test to see the effects of multi-tasking on Suparna's brain.
In the test Suparna has to mark every 'the' on a written page. And while she is doing that, she also has to count the number of times the word 'you' is said in a Beatles song.
Along with these two tasks, every time Dr Manvir rings the bell, Suparna has to shift her seat.
When Suparna does each task in isolation, her scores are consistently high and she takes little time to do the tasks. But when she does them together, both her efficiency and speed come down radically.
Dr Manvir tells Suparna about her test results. Her accuracy is less than one third.
While telling her about her test results, Dr Manvir also explains that it's due to multi-tasking, a lot of people have started complaining of short-term memory lapses.
Handling multiple tasks comes with an immediate loss of ability, but it can also lead to more long term damages.
Dr Manvir further explains that multi-tasking can pre-dispose a person and is now a known indicator for hyper-tension, diabetes, heart-disease and stroke.
Medically speaking, stress leads to the release of a hormone called cortisol, it's called the 'fight or flight' hormone because it was originally intended as a survival reaction to life-and-death situations.
Ironically, the hormone is secreted in everyday situations of stress that are far from life-threatening.
"With every generation there is more and more stress and demands on the brain, and the definition of stress changes, but our brain continues to make no distinction," says Dr Manvir.
The brain is perhaps the least understood organ in the human body. This is partly because everyone has a differently wired brain. Which is all the more reason everyone must take better care of it. Because we often don't know the kind of dangers and stress we are up against.
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