Women’s Heart Health

Go Red for Women!  Friday, February 5th, 2021 is National Wear Red Day to raise awareness for women’s heart health!  

Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death in women, causing one in every three deaths.

Since chronic stress can have devastating effects on heart health, reducing your stress level is a critical component of living a healthy life.  Here are some tips to reduce stress and reduce your risk for heart disease!  

What really is stress?

Stress is any influence that activates the HPA axis – the Hypothalamus – Pituitary – Adrenal axis. 

When you experience stress of any kind, your hypothalamus tells your pituitary to do something about it.  Your pituitary then tells your adrenals to launch the chemical cocktail that prepares the body to manage stress.  These performance-enhancing chemicals include adrenaline and cortisol. 

The stress stimulus could be mental or emotional, like…

• if your job isn’t a right fit for your natural strengths and skill set, 
• If you’re in a relationship that isn’t a right fit for your needs and personality, 
• if you’re over-obligated and overwhelmed, 
• if you wonder about your purpose in life, 
• or even from something like being cut off in traffic. 

Or the stress stimulus could be physiological – like from 

• food sensitivities 
• GI pathogens, 
• hormone imbalance,
• digestive issues,
• or low blood sugar. 

When you’re chronically stressed mentally, emotionally, or physiologically, your HPA axis function can start to degrade, which can cause myriad health issues, including heart disease, heart attacks, high blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms, and stroke.  

How do you reduce stress?

Reducing stress is a critical factor for reducing your risk for cardiovascular disease.  Here are six steps that you can take to reduce risk and help your heart:  

1 - Make self-care a priority.

Self-care is anything that you decide or do that contributes to your well-being. 

Self-care can include unplugging from technology, the media, or the news.  Self-care can mean getting a massage, spending time in solitude for personal reflection, spending time with friends, or doing something for yourself like getting a pedicure.  Self-care can include healthy habits like drinking enough water, moving your body and exercising and eating the right foods for what your body needs.  

Self-care can mean spending time outside, either to simply breathe and be, or while participating in an activity like hiking, bird-watching, or skiing.  Self-care also includes mindfulness practices, like noticing your thoughts, developing self-awareness, really tasting your food, and being fully present in the moment.  Self-care can also mean taking time to simply be creative with art or crafts, to have a hobby that you enjoy or a passion that you pursue like climbing or golf.  

The high-performing women I serve come to me because they feel exhausted and stressed, and struggle with chronic health issues.  With consultation and functional lab testing, I investigate the underlying causes of the exhaustion, stress, and symptoms.  For each client, I then provide a customized protocol for self-care that includes specific recommendations for nutrition, rest, exercise, stress reduction, and supplementation.  

Self-care is an integral part of a healthy life!

2 - Take steps to reduce mental and emotional stress.

Self-care can help with reducing mental and emotional stress, absolutely.  But often, the women I work with practice self-care to reduce the effect of stress that could have been avoided.  These stressors include things like...

• the angst from working at a job where you feel undervalued, triggered by your boss or the culture, or whereat you’re not using your innate giftings and talents in a way that you find meaningful,
• the recurring microtrauma you experience when you lack healthy boundaries, chronically over-obligate, or surround yourself with people who are negative, critical, and reinforce your unhealthy, false mental models,
• the disappointment and chronic sadness you feel from being in a relationship wherein you don’t feel loved, or wherein your needs simply aren’t being met.

If you are in a job that you enjoy, wherein you are using your innate talents to do things you find meaningful, in an environment that is conducive to your achieving your potential, and whereat you have a productive relationship with the people around you, then your self-care could be focused on contributing to the good in your life, not on overcoming the stress and frustration from your work.  

If you have healthy boundaries, surround yourself with people who support and uplift you, fill your calendar with that which fills your cup, say yes to what you really want to be doing, and say no to everything else, then your self-care could be devoted to building health instead of providing triage for the damage done by your calendar and your crowd.  

If you are in a relationship wherein you feel valued and respected, wherein you and your partner have open, honest communication, and wherein you and your partner are both committed to meeting each others’ needs, then your self-care could be proactive and fun rather than reactive and a drag.

Taking steps to reduce your mental and emotional stress is an important part of supporting your heart health!  

3 - Eat a diet that supports your body’s unique nutritional needs.

“Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.” - Hippocrates

Your nutritional needs are highly unique – there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to nutrition.

This is in part because of your unique ethnic and genetic make-up, but also because of shifting environmental conditions, including a generally sedentary lifestyle wherein we don’t hunt or gather our food but rather purchase it from a grocery store, wherein we spend most of our time sitting, wherein our soils are nutrient-depleted, and other factors. 

Your body is a dynamic system of systems.  It is always in flux, always seeking balance among the different systems, attempting to regulate itself and adapt to your environment.  

Metabolic Typing captures your unique nutritional needs and:.

→ prevents chronic health conditions by promoting balance.

→ addresses health issues at a deep level, and is geared toward building health by correcting patterns of biochemical imbalance that are the root of chronic health problems. 

→ produces reliable, predictable, clinical results because it focuses on the needs of the person with a disease rather than the disease itself.

→ offers a highly integrated approach to building health by providing the right nutrients that your body needs at the sub-cellular level.  The cells have the nutrients they need, so the organs have the nutrients they need, so the systems have the nutrients they need, and subsequently the whole body has the nutrients it needs. 

→ relies on the body’s innate intelligence – the body was designed to exist in balance and heal itself. The Metabolic Typing Diet gives the body what it needs to do that.  

Make food your medicine, and your medicine, food!  

4 - Get regular exercise.  

There are so many benefits to making regular exercise a part of your lifestyle.  One of them is that it improves your cardiovascular health and reduces your risk for heart disease!  Here are a few more…

• Increased feelings of happiness
• Increased confidence
• Improved cognitive function, memory, and learning ability
• Increased bone density
• Stronger connective tissues that are less prone to injury
• Healthy weight maintenance
• Improved blood flow
• Decreased chronic pain
• Decreased risk of chronic and terminal disease
• Lower blood pressure
• Lower stress
• Better sleep!

Speaking of better sleep...

5 - Get sufficient sleep.

We all need our rest!  Much like exercise, getting healthy sleep has so many benefits, one of which is reducing your risk for cardiovascular disease!  

When we get healthy sleep, we experience:

• improved mental focus, productivity
• increased creativity
• a more balanced, positive emotional state
• improved muscle repair and growth
• increased fat-burning and healthy-weight-maintenance
• improved immune system health
• better brain health
• reduced inflammation
• improved insulin sensitivity
• reduced stress

Speaking of reducing stress.... 

6 - Investigate and address the underlying causes of your hidden, physiological stress.

As a Health Detective, I work to treat the causes of health issues, thereby helping my clients to experience whole-body, whole-life health.

If you 

• experience chronic mental or emotional stress, 
• are chronically exhausted and struggle with chronic-health-related symptoms, 
• are concerned about the risk factors associated with heart disease, 

→ you have the option to investigate the HIDDEN stressors that may be the underlying causes of your concerns.  These HIDDEN stressors include issues with your Hormone, Immune, Digestive, Detoxification, Energy production, and Neurological systems.  

As a Health Detective, I run functional lab tests for my clients to investigate these HIDDEN sources of stress, which could be putting you at risk for cardiovascular disease.  These functional lab tests give us valuable information so that we can design a customized, corrective and preventive lifestyle protocol for actual healing and real, long-term health.  

Reducing your mental, emotional, and physiological stress is critical for your heart-health!  

Go Red for Women and take action to reduce your risk for cardiovascular disease!