Your Healthy Heart 4

Continued from last month:

Chapter 2

Where Does Heart Disease Come From?

As above, so below; as within, so without--Hermetic Dicturm

Read any medical digest, and you’ll see that a number of factors are to blame for heart disease. These include:

• Poor eating habits

• A genetic predisposition to heart disease

• Lack of exercise.

• High cholesterol levels

• Clogged arteries.

As you might expect, though, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Heart disease has its roots in something deeper yet. Becoming aware of what this “something” is enables you to start taking action today to begin reversing disease and cultivating health.

Who Does Heart Disease Affect?

In one word: everyone. It affects men, women, and children. Although the 65 and older population is at an especially high risk of dying from a heart attack or heart disease, 45% of heart attacks occur in younger individuals. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, nearly 50,000 younger males and more than 20,000 younger females died in the U.S. in 1997 alone from heart and cardiovascular disease. These numbers include children and teenagers.

Heart disease and stroke don’t always lead to death, but they can seriously disrupt a person’s quality of life. A stroke can cause partial paralysis. It can impair a person’s speech, hearing, motor skills, or cognitive response. A heart attack can significantly weaken an individual. Activities that were once enjoyed may not be available to someone affected by heart disease.

Children suffer after a once-vibrant parent or grandparent can no longer fully participate in their lives. Financial hardships can ensue when a person becomes disabled from heart disease and can no longer work. Heart disease affects people of all ages one way or another.

The end of suffering comes as more people become educated. The benefits will be many. Individuals will be around – and able – for those who love them. Their children will have the chance to enjoy longer, healthier lives. Becoming educated lets you be part of the solution to the challenges facing hospitals and medical care in general today. You use self-care healthcare and rely upon doctor’s office and hospitals as back-up.

The Physical Factors

When you have accumulated stress in your mind-body, or if you are under chronic low-grade stress, your self-repair mechanisms are put on hold. Your self defense mechanisms are engaged in the classic “fight or flight” response.

Without self-repair systems on line, your blood scars your heart and blood vessels with its acid bath. Then you develop heart disease or stroke as the cause of your body’s decline unto death.

Your heart carries the stresses of your past—heartbreak, heartache, indulgences in harmful substances (including food), polluted water, oxygen-poor air and electromagnetic radiation. The damage over the years may be significant, but there is good news. This damage can be undone and repaired without surgery or harmful drugs. There are non-toxic ways to help prevent heart disease from developing in the future and reverse at least some, if not all, of the accumulated damage from the past.

As you age, the self-renewal functions that repair your physical heart decline in efficiency. You can stimulate them to restore natural health and clean out the old toxins. How old you are really is irrelevant; you can begin today, whatever your biological age.

What Causes Heart Disease?

Stress is the underlying cause of heart disease. It creates a toxic and acidic condition in the body known as toxemia, which undermines all organ functions. Toxemia is another term for blood poisoning.

Imagine an acid flowing through your blood vessels, eroding the ordinarily smooth muscular lining of the endothelium. It becomes rough and pock-marked. Cholesterol and other fats stick to it, clot and harden. This is bad news for your heart. This is what toxemia does, and its root cause is stress. When you are routinely subjected to high levels of stress over time, your body suffers, starting with a compromised immune system. Things go downhill from there.

Under ordinary circumstances, stress is not a bad thing. It’s actually the underlying element of growth. Lifting a weight, for example, temporarily breaks down muscle tissue. When given adequate time for integration and recovery, the muscle grows back with denser, stronger tissue. However, without an adequate recovery time, muscles grow inflamed and stiffen if subjected to the very same stresses.

There are two types of stress: eustress (good) and distress (bad). Too much stimulation and excitement – even when it is beneficial initially – will turn into distress. Thus, a vacation can be a boost to your health … or a factor undermining it.

Stress is made up of stressors, events that impinge upon your immune and self-repair functions. Too many stressors too quickly can produce acute stress. An example is an accident that causes temporary injury. The body, provided with the appropriate environment and care, recovers.

A birthday party or a holiday gathering can produce acute stress that disappears after a short time. Even an evening with friends and family can result in acute stress that the body normally handles without difficulty.

Some of the environmental stressors are pollution in your food, air and water and the electromagnetic field around you. After a good night’s sleep your system normally rebounds after its brief exposure. Luckily for us, the body tends to be quite resilient.

Stressors come in different categories. Thought stressors include:

• anger

• sadness

• regret,

• anxiety,

• guilt

• worry.

Situational stressors include events:

• birthdays

• anniversaries

• holidays

• meetings

• parties

• celebrations

• sporting events

Problems arise when stressors are ongoing and recovery is lacking. The result of chronic stress is a negative biochemistry that undermines health.

Even a small stressor, over time and without relief from its impact, can become chronic. The computer programmer who types on a keyboard daily without taking breaks may not notice issues from this repetitive motion until one morning she wakes up with carpal tunnel symptoms. The machinist constantly exposed to the whir of machines may not realize it’s a stressor until one day he finds that he can’t hear certain frequencies as well as he used to. Little stressors can lead to big issues over time.

One stressor, or even fifty stressors, may be comfortably managed. The question is, what’s the breaking point? The next stressor may well be the one that causes symptoms to arise. It comes from inadequate recovery. In addition, the breaking point differs from one person to the next, since we all have different tolerance levels.

There’s a reason we need to get enough sleep. Our bodies need that time to renew and regenerate. In the same way, we need a break in between stressors of all kinds for growth and healing to take place.