[imagesource: Curtis Baker / Netflix]

Fancy a guess at how long South Africa has been under some form of lockdown?

It seems like years ago that one of those President Ramaphosa evening addresses spoke about three weeks of hard lockdown, which was due to end on April 16, 2020.

Instead, today is day 483 of South Africa in lockdown, with alert levels adjusted as waves of COVID-19 infections have come and gone.

Hopefully, as vaccinations open up to include younger age groups, we will eventually see the back of lockdown, but that day is very much a blip in the distance.

As The Telegraph points out, researchers are still attempting to understand exactly what impact lockdowns have had on us, but we do know some things for sure:

Two of the key hormones that play a role in our behaviour, and are impacted by isolation, are Cortisol and Dopamine.

As you can see in the video above, Cortisol is the body’s main stress hormone and its rhythm can be disrupted by modern-day stresses, such as those brought on by the pandemic, the isolation of lockdown and the anxiety around returning to the opening world again.

Dopamine is the body’s ‘reward’ hormone, and impairment of the cortex can lead to a release of our regular inhibitions, causing us to turn to bad habits for perceived reward.

Even as some countries have seen lockdown restrictions lifted, many have struggled to return to life as normal.

Psychiatrist Dr Arthur Bregman calls it “cave syndrome”, with people “afraid of breaking out of isolation and the small, manageable world they had become accustomed to”.

In this video, that syndrome is explored in greater detail, as well as looking at the brain’s rewiring:

[source:telegraph]