The Link Between Stress and Heart Disease

All of us experience stress almost every day. It is a huge mental burden that has become almost inevitable in all of our lives.However, other than mental burden, it can seriously harm our heart as well.
So, let’s make sure to keep our heart protected.

How Stress Hurts Your Heart

Whenever we get stressed, our body starts to release hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.

These hormones result in increasing the heart rate and the blood pressure. This afterall creates a danger for the heart.
Even though, this response can be helpful in short bursts, in the long run- chronic stress keeps our body overdriven which can lead to problems like:

1.High Blood Pressure :
Constant stress strains your heart and blood vessels, which leads to increase the risk of hypertension.

2.Inflammation:

Stress triggers inflammation, which ultimately damages blood vessels. This can later contribute to plaque buildup in arteries.

3.Unhealthy Habits:

Stress often leads people to many bad habits like overeating, smoking, drinking or skipping exercise.
All of these habits can harm our heart.

Who is Most at Risk?

Certain job roles are more vulnerable to stress related heart issues :

• People with high pressure jobs
• Healthcare professionals
• People going through financial struggles often has higher chances of mental stress.

How to Protect our Heart?

The fact is, no matter what we do, we cannot completely eliminate stress from our lives.

What we can do is, we can definitely manage it by following ways:

1. Exercise:

Even a 30 minute walk at a park can reduce our stress and improve our heart health.

2. Practice Mindfulness:

It is very important to try meditation, deep breathing or yoga to calm down our minds.

3. Sleep Well:

It is definitely necessary to have 7-8 hours of quality sleep each night.

4.Eat Healthy:

We need to focus on whole foods and avoid processed snacks.
It can be a bit difficult in the beginning, but definitely not impossible.

When to Seek Help?

There are days and times in our lives when stress can feel overwhelming.

During such situations , we shouldn’t hesitate to talk to a doctor or a therapist.
It is very crucial to realise that stress is a part of all of our lives. But it doesn’t have to control your health.

By properly managing stress , we can protect our heart and live a healthier, happier life.