3 Tips to Naturally Lower Stress to Reduce Heart Disease Risk
Stress is part of life. There’s no way you can avoid stress entirely. However, if you constantly live with high stress levels it can lead to physical problems. These physical problems may include high blood pressure, angina (i.e. chest pains), arrhythmia (i.e. irregular heart rate) and heart disease.
How Does Stress Increase Heart Disease Risk?
Stress can increase heart disease risk in different ways. First, stress affects you emotionally. This could lead you to make unhealthy food and lifestyle choices, such as overeating, not exercising, and smoking. Stress also causes elevated levels of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which may have a negative impact long term. Research is also finding that stress impacts the way blood clots.
What Can You Do to Reduce Stress?
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Heart Disease Risk and Cholesterol Levels
Do you take statin medication? If so, when did your doctor recommend you being statins? Was it when your lab results found your LDL cholesterol levels to be elevated?
LDL cholesterol has been the measure used to determine when lipid lowering therapy is needed…and statins are often the therapy started.
Research is beginning to question if LDL is the best measure for knowing if cholesterol treatment is warranted to reduce heart disease risk.
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What Bad Habits Are Increasing Your Heart Disease Risk?
Annually, the American Heart Association (AHA), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and National Institutes of Health (NIH) publish the latest statistics for heart disease and stroke. The most recent updates found deaths due to cardiovascular disease actually decreased by 33% over the past 10 years and deaths due to stroke were reduced 37%.
This goes to show that a significant amount of progress has been made to improve outcomes for those who suffer heart attacks and strokes. Great news!
What’s not so good news are the increasing risk factors of US adults making them more likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke. Did you know 68% of US adults are overweight or obese? Did you know 32% of children are overweight and 17% of children obese? And according to the AHA, CDC, and NIH, 33% of US adults do no engage in any aerobic leisure time physical activity. If you look around, it’s not so hard to believe that a majority of US adults are overweight and sedentary. Where do you fall?
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Why is HDL Cholesterol Considered to be ‘Good’?
There are some very interesting questions coming out regarding the benefits of HDL cholesterol.
High HDL cholesterol has always been encouraged because people with higher HDL cholesterol levels have a reduced risk for heart disease. If you have low HDL cholesterol levels it’s likely that your doctor recommended you to boost levels through diet and exercise or by taking niacin supplements. This is due to the long held belief that HDL cholesterol reduces heart disease risk by “picking up” artery clogging cholesterol from circulation.
A new study utilizing modern genetic testing is challenging this theory, finding that there may not be a direct cause-and-effect relationship between reduced heart disease risk and high HDL cholesterol levels. Study findings indicate the high HDL levels themselves may not be protective on their own. These high HDL levels may be an indicator of something else reducing heart disease risk.
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4 Nutrients to Prevent Heart Disease
You can use nutrients now to prevent heart disease later. Here are 4 nutrients to ensure are a regular part of your daily diet.
Coenzyme Q10
Coenzyme Q10 (ubiquinone) is a powerful antioxidant and plays a key role in cellular energy production. Within the cellular mitochondria, coenzyme Q10 is responsible for carrying the electrons back and forth between enzymes in the production of ATP (energy).
Coenzyme Q10 also removes many free radicals from circulation. It’s these free radicals that lead to oxidation of LDL and the subsequent chain of events that result in heart disease.
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Three Spices to Boost Antioxidants in Your Diet
Generally when you think about where to get antioxidants in your diet, it’s likely you picture fruit and vegetables. For example, berries are rich in antioxidants as well as dark green leafy vegetables. Red wine and dark chocolate may even come to mind as antioxidant sources.
Antioxidants protect cells from damage caused by free radicals leading to oxidative stress. It’s believed a diet rich in antioxidants may provide protective benefits to fight against chronic diseases, such as heart disease and cancer.
Some examples of antioxidants include beta-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, and resveratrol.
Often overlooked antioxidant sources include several herbs and spices.
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