Feb
25

Emotions and Heart Health

Emotions are powerful. They effect your mental, but also your physical health. Being happy, laughing, being at peace at heart are emotions that not only promote cardiovascular health, but also assist to heal the entire body.

An emotion is a mental and physiological state associated with a wide variety of feelings, thoughts, and behavior. Emotions are subjective experiences, or experienced from an individual point of view. Emotion is often associated with mood, temperament, personality, and disposition.

Do you know that negative emotions like worry, anxiety, anger, hate, frustration, bitterness, and depression can put you at risk for heart disease? Those kinds of emotions can result in high blood pressure because cause the arteries spasm and close down sort of like a boa constrictor squeezing around its prey! Moreover, hard emotions negatively impact the immune system and can keep you from loosing weight.

Typical signs of distress can include feeling tight in the chest, excessive sweating, nervousness, loss of appetite, not being able to concentrate.

Here are a few suggestions that might help you work through unwholesome feelings, thus helping your heart feel better and get healthier:

  • Exercising moderately for a minimum of 30 minutes per day, five days a week to helps infuse your brain with “feel-good chemicals”. You do not need to hit a gym. Brisk walking, jogging, biking, swimming are great options.
     
  • Deep breathing exercises are powerful tension tamers. As they help oxygenate the blood, oxygen can travel more freely to the brain, promoting a clearer thinking, quieting the mind and relax muscles and reduce your risk of suffering a stroke.
     
  • Breathing exercises are easy because you can do them anywhere, and they work quickly so you can de-stress in a flash. Sit or stand in a relaxed position. Slowly inhale through your nose, counting to five in your head. Let the air out from your mouth, counting to eight in your head as it leaves your lungs. Repeat several times. That’s it!
     
  • As you breathe, let your abdomen expand outward, rather than raising your shoulders. This is a more relaxed and natural way and helps your lungs fill themselves more fully with fresh air, releasing more “old” air.
     
  • You can do this just a few times to release tension, or for several minutes as a form of relaxation.
     
  • Forgive if someone did you wrong. You will find that it is like setting an inmate free and finding out that inmate was you. Holding a grudge for a long time can make you bitter and hateful, harm your heart, thus increase your heart disease risk, hurt your pancreas and set you up for degenerative diseases. It doesn’t even matter whether your anger is justified or not. The Bible tells us to resolve things with the person who hurt us quickly and not to go to bed without having forgiven. Since God created us, shouldn’t we believe that He knows best!
     
  • Stay connected. Hang out with friends. Reconnect with family members. Talk about your feelings with someone. Tell God about it and ask Him for an answer.
     
  • Social isolation and loneliness can aggravate high blood pressure and lower immunity, both of which negatively affect your heart.
     
  • Reach out and help someone. That will help you see a bigger picture, namely that you are not the only person who has problems. Volunteering some of your time to help others is very healing to the soul and the heart.
     
  • Say ‘NO’ to junk food. Cut back on foods that are high in sugar and/or fat. They may give you energy surges that exacerbate heart palpitations and may even trigger an anxiety episode.
     
  • Eat a healthy well balanced diet and supplement your nutritional gaps

Related Articles:

Keywords: , , , , , , ,

Healthy Hearts Subscribe to RSS feed