Dr. Ida Fonkoue

So I moved to the UFs and I did a PhD in integrative physiology.

And during my PhD, I decided to study stress.

I just wanted to see the effect of stress on the heart and blood vessel.

I've always been interested in internal medicine.

Working with Dr. Carter at Michigan Tech, I did my PhD at Michigan Tech.

We looked at how acute stress through mental stressors using a serous obstruction, mental arithmetics.

So we basically had people do MAT acutely in the lab while they were hooked on many equipment, looking at their nerve, which is the fight or flight response, looking at their heart, their blood vessels, their breathing.

So we were recording all of that while we stress them with mental MAT acutely, serious obstructions.

When I was done with my PhD, thinking again about the story of my father and my younger sister, because even though I had moved here, my sister was still back home and my father now had to, like the little break I gave him when I was there, now he was back being the one.

Not sleeping, if I could say.

So I decided to move and do a PhD here.

where I'll study the effect of post-traumatic stress disorder.

At the time, I didn't put a name on it like that.

I was really interested in chronic stress.

I studied acute stress.

I wanted to see what happened with chronic stress.

I spoke to this physician who was at Emory during one of my conferences, and she said, well, I studied PTSD.

And I said, well, can you tell me more about it?

And I read more about it.

And I thought, well, this is a disease of the military.