Congenital Heart Defects
Stress is a major problem in Western culture. The British government estimated that stress cost the UK economy over ?7 billion ($14 billion) in 2001. With up to 80% of all industrial accidents due to stress, it’s rapidly becoming a major problem that both industry and health care companies want to tackle and reduce.
When you get stressed a hormone known as Adrenocorticotrophic or ACTH is released in to your bloodstream. This triggers the fight or flight mechanism, which translates to your heart rate speeding up as blood is pumped more rapidly around the body. Short term, this is fine as it works its way out of your system. Long term though and it becomes a problem as it stays in your system wearing you down. Eventually it will damage your immune system and possibly even cause a heart attack.
Why?
The human heart is designed to run steadily at a certain rate with occasional bursts to a higher rate. When you get stressed, your heart rate increases and the more stressed you are during the day the more your heart beat stays at the higher rate.
Let’s compare this to a car to give you a more visual idea of what we are talking about. Imagine you are in your car in a low (or first gear). Without your foot on the gas pedal, it ticks over nicely. That’s equivalent to your regular resting heart beat.
Now, put your foot flat to the floor and listen to the noise of the engine. That’s equivalent to your racing heart beat.
What do you think would happen to your engine if you drove everywhere with it racing and making that noise? How far would you get before the engine exploded into pieces?
The analogy shows you what you are doing to your heart when you are continually stressed.
It is not coincidence that otherwise healthy people who exercise, eat well and don’t drink or smoke suddenly have heart attacks - it’s from the build up of stress in their lives.
In 2002 the British Medical Journal published the results of an experiment where they followed hundreds of people for up to ten years and monitored their lives. What they discovered was that people who felt they were over-whelmed by their work or who did mundane day to day activities with no chance of development or advancement were almost three times as likely to develop heart disease as those who didn’t have these stresses.
They also discovered that these people suffering from stress were two to three times more likely to have a life ending heart attack.
And that’s simply from stress.
About the Author
Discover how you can reduce your stress and improve your quality of life through these powerful stress management techniques from Jason E. Johns at http://www.freemefromstress.com .
Did you know that if you have diabetes you have a greater chance of dying from heart disease or stroke and it doesn’t make any difference if you are a woman or a man? One reason is high blood levels of sugar make the walls of your blood vessels thicker and cause them to lose their elasticity, which in turn makes it harder for blood to pass through.
Type 1 diabetes is know as juvenile-onset diabetes and usually affects children and young adults and is genetically-linked. The following are some conditions that are typically found in people with type 2 diabetes, which is know as adult-onset diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
Depression: Depression doubles the risk of a person getting diabetes and after being diagnosed with diabetes a person will go through major lifestyle changes which will cause them to be more depressed. Diet changes and taking medicines are among the things that cause them to be more depressed.
Obesity: Obesity is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and strongly associated with insulin resistance. Loosing weight has been shown to improve heart-health along with diabetes.
Inactivity: Lack of exercise is another major risk factor. Along with loosing weight, exercise has helped to reduce blood pressure and the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Hypertension: High blood pressure has long been recognized as a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. If you have both high blood and diabetes your risk for heart disease doubles.
A symptom of diabetes is the skin of a diabetic person becomes very dry and flaky due to excessive loss of water, leading to dehydration which could result in a coma. Also it takes a long time for sores or cuts to heal. Diabetes is usually accompanied by sudden weight loss. There are many things that could be or may not be a symptom of diabetes. If you think you might have diabetes, go to your doctor right away to find out and it never hurts to have your heart checked out at the same time.
About the Author:
Rita Tate is the webmaster and editor for the website My Pal’s Place, http://www.mypalsplace.com/ [Re-print is permitted if a clickable link to http://www.mypalsplace.com/ is included with the article]
Tags: Heart Disease
