KNOW HOW STRESS AFFECTS YOUR HEART HEALTH

 Stress is a normal part of life, but it's how we handle it that matters. Whether daily stresses arise from deadlines or bills, ignoring stress can leave us suffering for longer than necessary! A lot of people find relief via different methods. It’s vital that you try to do everything in your power to relieve stress because once it becomes too much it could lead to a serious condition like depression or heart problems.

   Dr. Ganesh Krishnan Iyer talks about how chronic stress can make the heart work harder by increasing blood pressure and heart rate. What’s more is that the long-term effects of it can cause hypertension, abnormal heart rhythms, heart failure and even myocardial infarctions. Find out more about the nature of stress in this piece from GKT IYER to understand why it negatively affects the health of your heart!

What Causes Stress?

There are many different kinds of stress, not everyone is stressed by the same thing. While it may be normal to experience stress in different walks of life, and mostly because of major lifestyle changes we don’t always realize when stress happens. Stress can be caused by illness, unemployment, pregnancy, relocation to a new place, mental illness, problems in relationships or financial problems.

Signs of Stress:

Your body will start sending signals when faced with a stress-provoking situation. These signals could be physical or emotional in nature and they should never be ignored even if the response is a seemingly innocuous one. You may feel pain on a migraine, skin allergy, diarrhea, or indigestion that could lead to problems such as depressions, anxiety about the future, diabetes, heart disease and many more.

Stress can manifest itself physically, emotionally and cognitively. Symptoms like excessive perspiring or muscle pain are good indicators that you're stressed out over something. Other signs include irregular sleeping patterns, a racing heart and trouble eating. Stress may prompt you to get angry at people quickly or be mean for no reason and lead to depressive feelings that make it hard to feel anything other than discomfort in your body - so be aware of these psychosomatic manifestations of stress!

How Does Stress Affect Your Heart?

The body reacts to small amounts of stress as a protective mechanism, however, prolonged stress may not be good for your health. When you are enduring an abundance of stress, it has the ability to affect blood pressure by elevating sodium levels in your body and affecting how your platelets react; if left unchecked, this can contribute to high cholesterol and insulin resistance which raises the risk of heart disease. Very high levels of adrenaline in the blood is connected to broken heart syndrome, whose symptoms include chest pain and breathlessness. Broken Heart Syndrome can be triggered by a sudden unexpected event inducing acute chronic stress. Stress also leads to increased white blood cell production, which may cause arterial clot formation leading to heart disease.

    When people find themselves in stressful situations they often turn to food as a comfort. This can lead to the overconsumption of high calorie, fatty and sugary foods that give short term comfort but largely cause long term problems such as being overweight, gaining unhealthy amounts of weight due to increased blood pressure, cholesterol deposits and blood fat levels, developing diabetes which may lead to heart disease and other complications.

How to Manage Stress?

Stress affects everyone from time to time and getting knowledge of what might be triggering specifically for you is really important. In the case that you learn about it in time, you can also speak to someone about ways to manage it before changes happen in your daily life. There are physical and emotional factors, and learning how they affect you personally is vital to find out which therapy options will work best.

Conclusion:

       Try to take up a physical activity of your choice. It could be running, walking, or doing yoga. You should do anything that makes you feel invigorated! Just make sure it's something you enjoy and can afford because we don't want you spoiling your fun time by overdoing it! Exercising releases endorphins which have a calming effect on us and help us to relax. Get enough sleep every night so that you can wake up feeling refreshed afterward.

Dr. Iyer has worked as a chief Cardiothoracic Surgeon in Bangalore and in some of the top multi-specialty hospitals in India prior to joining Aster CMI's Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery as lead consultant. He has an extensive knowledge base on all things cardiac, from regular patient management to emergency surgery, which he's used over the years to train graduate medical students at numerous hospitals across India in both basic clinical procedures and relevant advanced surgical techniques for both routine and emergency patient treatment.