Relaxation: The key to a healthy heart

Just relax – it could save your heart. A recent study definitively linked stress with heart disease, but there are simple ways to de-stress and stay healthy.

Stress is part of modern life and it has long been suspected that it may play a part in heart disease.

The bad news is that a multi-year study published in the medical journal The Lancet shows that being chronically stressed takes a serious, and lasting, toll on your health and increases the risk of heart disease.

Stress apparently triggers the amygdala – the part of the brain keyed specifically to respond to stress – which then activates bone marrow and inflames the arteries.

This is a survival reaction that prepares the body for a potentially harmful experience, such as injury, which would have been essential for the earliest humans. Bone marrow produces the white blood cells necessary for tissue repair. Widening the arteries increases blood flow. However, in the modern environment, the over-production of white blood cells can cause a buildup of plaque in the arteries and lead to heart disease.

The people in the study with higher amygdala activity had a greater risk of cardiovascular disease and developed problems sooner than those with lower activity.

“Eventually, chronic stress could be treated as an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease, which is routinely screened for and effectively managed like other major cardiovascular disease risk factors, such as smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes,” says study author and cardiologist Dr Ahmed Tawakol, co-director of the Cardiac MR PET CT Program at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“So far, it appears that things like mindfulness and other stress reduction approaches seem to really nicely tamp down on the amygdala, and they appear to even cause benefits in other areas of the brain.”

The other stress-reduction approaches are diet and exercise. Regular exercise triggers feel-good chemicals in the brain such as dopamine and endorphins. It also regulates and reduces the damage the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline cause.

Physical activity can relax your muscles and relieve tension, making it a great way to combat stress. Exercise also helps enrich the brain with oxygen and nutrients, which can improve cognitive functioning and leave you feeling energised and alert. As a result, your mental focus and emotional stamina get a boost, which means you’re in better shape to tackle the challenges of daily life. You should team a good exercise regime with a healthy diet that limits the intake of refined sugar, saturated fats, salt and alcohol, and increases the amounts of fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, lean meats and unprocessed foods.

As an added bonus, you may even lose weight!

January 11, 2020

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