February is heart month and for the next few weeks, we'll be focusing on heart health. Our busy lifestyle could be one of the biggest contributors to heart problems. That lifestyle can lead to stress.
"Stress actually amounts to what happens to your body when you face a challenge,” said cardiopulmonary nurse, Jojo Larin. “In small doses, it can be good for you because it makes you more alert and it releases bursts of energy. In long doses, however, it can affect your physical and mental health."
Anyone on the H-1 Freeway at rush hour can testify that stress affects your mental well-being, but it can also bring about real physical changes in your body as well.
"It can increase blood pressure, it can increase heart rate, it can increase blood sugar, all things that can be bad long term,” said Larin.
It can also cause hypertension which leads to heart disease. There are things that can lead to stress we can do nothing about. "I would say the most common causes are the death of a loved one, be it person or animal, a major medical illness and the financial implications involved with that, loss of a job or loss of a relationship,” said Larin.
Knowing that stress can have an impact on the health of our heart, Nurse Larin says there are some simple things to do to relieve that stress. "For one, practice deep breathing techniques. That's easy, that's simple to do and you can knock that out straight away when your body's feeling stress. Exercise is also another."
She says it's also important to get enough sleep and to eat healthy. But back to the deep breathing for a moment. Is there a recommended number of deep breaths?
"Just as long as you can do it,” said Larin. “I often have a lot of patients that I have do deep breathing and they say well, how many deep breaths do I need to take and my standard answer is, well, you should take them for the rest of your life."
