Stress, Anxiety, Depression and Purpose

Welcome to step 4 of our series, Ten Steps to Hearth Health: How to Not be a Statistic. So far we have covered how to: live from the heart, get moving (exercise) and nourish your body and heart. 

A Balanced Heart Is A Healthy Heart

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Today we are digging deep into something that affects so many of us, stress.

The past few years have been a really, really rough time. It’s been a time of stress in ways that we never even knew were possible. We all can deal with stress in like a day or a week or a month even, but years and years of chronic stress, it’s hard. 

The way that we think, the way that we perceive things and take them in affects our emotions. We become anxious, we become depressed, and then our behaviors change. We stop taking care of ourselves. We eat too much, we drink too much. We stop sleeping or we sleep way too much. 

Stress Takes a Toll on Our Hearts 

How we think and how we feel and how we behave also affects our hearts. One of the things I talk about is stress and the profound impact of stress on the lining of the arteries. So what happens with that? It’s really interesting – There’s something called the autonomic nervous system. 

It sounds complicated, but it’s not. There are two parts of it. There’s one part that releases epinephrine and norepinephrine and cortisol. It’s part of the sympathetic nervous system. It’s the fight or flight one, the one that increases when we’re really scared or freaked out or have a test or stand up in front of people talking. 

And then there’s the other side, the parasympathetic nervous system. It’s the resting one, the rest and digest. It’s the one that keeps us calm. It’s the one that gets triggered when you’re a runner and your arteries are healthy and dilated. It’s the one that keeps the blood pressure low and keeps the heart rate low. And it’s interesting because we can actually figure out if that’s working well, and it’s something called the heart rate variability. This is important for us to understand if we’re trying to get healthy. 

Because when we’re not healthy, when we’re not taking care of ourselves, we don’t have a good heart rate variability. So let me explain a little bit what that is. When you’re parasympathetic nervous system, it’s doing its job. Every time you breathe, there’s a little variation in your heartbeat. Your bump, bump, bump, bump varies just a little bit. 

When you have a sympathetic overdrive, it just can’t vary at all. And we can monitor that. You could monitor that. Looking at the heart from the outside, you can’t get that much information. So we have to figure out all these ways to look at it from the inside. Depression is something that I’m hearing so much about because the stress is daunting and it’s overwhelming, but there aer ways to get through it. 

Stress and Depression

One of the best ways to get through stres and depression is to make sure you get enough sleep. Also try to focus on resiliency, on being mindful every day and being present. If we think about the future, we can’t predict what’s going to happen, so you become so anxious about what you don’t know. And then if you go in the past and you think about all those things that you can’t change, that leaves you depressed. 

I want you to be right here, right now with me, with your heart, with your health. I want you to wake up every day paying attention to who you are and who you want to be. Even if it’s just waking up and feeling healthier than you did the day before. Meditating, finding times of stillness, of breath of peace every single day. We all need to figure out how to get through this and find healthier ways to cope. 

We can’t control everything and the great news is, we don’t have to. We have to learn how to let things go. The easiest way to do that, honestly, is just to laugh. Just laugh when you feel like crying, because when you laugh, it actually fakes your brain into thinking you’re happier than you are. There is such a thing as laugh therapy, but just never forget to laugh at those things that you can, especially the things you cannot change.

Laughing and getting other people to laugh, like giving them a gift of wellness and of health, and that makes me happy too. Having people to really rely on is part of that. Who are you going to bring into your inner circle and make part of your team of resiliency and coping and laughing? Having a community, having a group of people that raise you up, that help you, that support you, that’s part of your infrastructure. There is nothing better than surrounding yourself with love and support for a heart healthy life. 

The time to do it all is right. Now. Adesso, Adesso, Adesso. 

Take one small step of heartcare today. Click here to visit our fun, little quiz that will tell you if your heart is in balance. Post that or something like it where you’ll see it: On your mirror, on your laptop, on your social media?! (and yes, please tag us so we can celebrate the start of your heartcare journey).