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Stress is something we are all familiar with. While small amounts of stress may actually be beneficial and keep us motivated towards our goals, too much of it is extremely harmful for our health. Unfortunately, today’s lifestyle makes it nearly impossible to eliminate stress. Deadlines, bills, worrying about friends and family, all these things add to our daily worries. We struggle with countless issues every day, worsening our mental health over time, but we continue pushing through; that is, until the stress starts showing up physically and becomes harder to ignore. Yes, that’s right! Stress is not just “mental”, and recent studies have shown that emotional stress can damage the heart just as much as smoking or high cholesterol.
The science behind this is simple. When the mind is stressed, your body releases hormones like cortisol and adrenaline to help you cope with the stressful situation at hand. These hormones raise blood pressure, increase heart rate, and tighten your blood vessels. This reaction is helpful in the short term, but if stress lasts for longer periods of time, it leads to unnecessary strain on the heart. This strain then leads to your heart working harder than it should, causing serious damage over time. Studies have shown that people who suffer from long-term stress, anxiety, or depression are at a higher risk of developing heart disease, and according to Harvard Health, chronic stress can raise the risk of heart disease by as much as 40%.
These findings prove that depression and loneliness don’t just hurt emotionally, but also physically hurt your body. The body reacts to long-term mental stress as it would to any other ailment and produces symptoms of inflammation, which can damage blood vessels and make the heart weaker. Additionally, stress can push people towards unhealthy habits like smoking, excessive drinking, or overeating, all of which can cause even more strain on the heart. A young person, with absolutely no family history of heart disease and a considerably “healthy” lifestyle of clean eating and working out, can end up in the hospital with chest pain caused by serious stress. So why is it that we take care of our body only when it is physically sick, watching what we eat, ensuring our cholesterol levels are optimum, but never focusing on mental health until it’s too late?
Perhaps most of us dismiss stress as “normal”. We accept that it’s a part of life, and we learn to live with it. Our hectic modern lives, where we are always busy, always online, always comparing, leave no room for rest. We are constantly being bombarded with new information online, about everything bad that is happening everywhere in the world, and new trends that we must keep up with to fit in. Additionally, we are always racing against others, watching others achieve our dreams, wondering how we can compete and reach the same point. Needless to say, that is not what the human body is designed to endure. Add to it the fact that “hustle culture” has become so normalized that we end up feeling guilty for getting some well-deserved rest, and if you are not constantly exhausted, you must not be productive enough, and you have the perfect recipe for a strained, weakened heart.
The good news, however, is that despite common belief, stress can definitely be managed. For example, even just ten minutes a day of mindfulness and meditation has been proven to considerably lower stress levels. If your stress has reached a point where you are unable to handle it by yourself, it is always a good idea to turn towards professional help in the form of cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps break the cycle of negative thinking. Additionally, regular exercise also helps act as a natural antidepressant for the heart, and last but not least, a good amount of sleep is also very crucial, as studies have shown that less than 6 hours of sleep increases heart disease risk.
While eliminating stress from our lives may not be an option, lowering and managing stress levels is very important, and we must strive for it every day by doing little things for our mental health. Easy, simple things like taking short walks in nature during stressful days, turning off mobile phone notifications at night to allow yourself time to wind down, having a nighttime routine with things like reading or writing in a gratitude journal, or just talking about your feelings, help immensely with bringing down stress levels, and in turn protect your heart. Community and connection always help; for example, simply laughing with friends lowers your heart rate and helps you feel safe.
Doctors are now urging people to treat stress and depression as seriously as diabetes or hypertension. Some hospitals now include mental health screenings in cardiac care programs as well, which shows that the mind-body link is finally getting recognition. However, people still need to see stress as a real medical concern and to understand that treating your emotions is also treating your heart. Your heart is an important organ that beats for more than survival; it beats for joy, calmness, and connection, which is why it’s important to take care of it by first and foremost taking care of your mind.
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