Heart Health - Part 2
Stress & Your Heart
Your heart keeps you alive during stress and so it’s not surprising that many symptoms of stress show themselves in your cardiovascular system. Your blood pressure is the first to tip you off that stress might be stressing out your cardiovascular system.
Both high and low blood pressure can be connected to stress, but some people only experience low blood pressure. If you were born with low blood pressure, then you’re much more susceptible to huge blood pressure drops when under stress.
Normally, this is how it goes:
When you’re under stress, your body gets ready for attack. It doesn’t matter what kind of stress it is, it can be purely emotional, but your body gets ready to defend and survive.
To do this, your body increases your blood pressure. This is a brilliant way to ensure that your muscles have the glucose and nutrients they need to fight or run. The problem is…we don’t usually get to use this energy, we stay seated in a chair, stressing at our computer or in our car. So, your blood pressure stays high much longer than necessary. Combine that with the fact that stress is a daily occurrence instead of a rarity, and voila, high blood pressure.
If you have a blood pressure cuff at home, you can test this out yourself. Take your blood pressure when you’re sitting down and totally relaxed. Now, talk to someone (or to yourself) about something that’s worrisome and take your blood pressure again. Now it’s much higher.
Over time, this system breaks down and your body doesn’t have the resources (like cortisol) to boost your blood pressure when you’re stressed and your blood pressure starts to drop. At first, it’s a mild issue, you feel dizzy when you stand up quickly. But, eventually, you can start to feel light-headed or dizzy randomly throughout the day. This tends to be worse in the late afternoon.
Natural ways to help your blood pressure:
High Blood Pressure:
Paced breathing is very helpful at calming down your nervous system which will bring your blood pressure back to normal
Exercise – acts as the “flight” in fight or flight and lets your body know that you’ve moved away from the danger.
Nutrients that can help: Magnesium (and sometimes calcium) and omega-3s.
Low Blood Pressure:
Be sure to stay hydrated, dehydration lowers your blood volume and drops your blood pressure even further
Sea salt – add salt to your water and to your food to help increase your blood volume (water follows salt and it makes you thirsty :)
Licorice – if you have chronic low blood pressure, licorice is very helpful to give you a bump. It can increase your energy and stop dizziness and light-headedness.
Over time, chronic stress can cause many cardiovascular issues. Namely, it can raise your blood sugar and you’ll see later in Part 3 that high blood sugar can cause a whole pile of damage to your arteries.
Keep an eye on your blood pressure, it’s the first cry for help from your cardiovascular system…and it’s normal for your blood pressure to change throughout the day.
Got any questions or comments? Comment below, jump to our private Facebook Group, or the Ask Lisa page :).