Little known ways STRESS can not only ruin your day, but also mess-up your heart.
What causes heart disease?
How Stress contributes to heart disease
For the longest time, conventional wisdom was, that atherosclerosis i.e. hardening of the arteries, was the result of poor eating habits. However new finding are that there is more to that than the food we eat. It is a combination of factors that contribute to the plaque that builds up in our arteries. Some of the contributing factors are lack of exercise, poor diet and more importantly stress.
Build-up in the arterial wall, occurs when fat, cholesterol, and other substances deposit on the walls of arteries and form hard structures called plaques. Over time, these plaques can block the arteries restrict blood flow to the heart muscle damaging the heart muscle. Or simply break off and obstruct tiny arteries in the heart and starving the heart muscle of oxygen. In some cases the ruptured plaque may travel to the brain and cause a stroke.
Because the plaque comprised of cholesterol, it was the primary focus of treatment of heart disease. Recent research and studies are looking in the the root cause and mechanism behind the build up of the plaque. New studies are showing that psychosocial factors such as stress, personality, anxiety, etc play an important role in the onset of atherosclerosis. The stress hormones (chemical messengers in our blood) contribute to inflammation in the body which may be what triggers the plaque build-up.
What can we do about it?
We can’t eliminate stress, however we can learn to cope with it.
Using theses 3 coping tips will help you throughout the week:
Learn to relax.
Change your mindset.
Nurture mind, body and soul.
Learn to relax – easier said than done. Here’s a quick tip that will help you catch your breath and calm down is less than a minute:
Close your eyes and inhale for 3 seconds from deep within your diaphragm, then exhale for 3 seconds. Repeat 3 times.
Stay tuned, we will be posting more on the things you can do to beef-up your coping skills. Also check out this Resource kit.
Reference
Photo: Flickr, kugel
Heidt T, Sager HB, Courties G, Dutta P, Iwamoto Y, Zaltsman A, von Zur Muhlen C, Bode C, Fricchione GL, Denninger J, Lin CP, Vinegoni C, Libby P, Swirski FK, Weissleder R, & Nahrendorf M (2014). Chronic variable stress activates hematopoietic stem cells. Nature medicine, 20 (7), 754-8 PMID: 24952646
