Search:

Home | Disease & Illness | Other Disease & Illness

An article on Other Disease & Illness and related topics

For additional information and special deals related to some of the items on this article, place your cursor over the double-underlined links. All information supplied by Kontera.com

Hypertension and Heart Disease

By: Crystal

Hypertension and heart disease are also believed to be trigg by stress. Before you can look at what you can do to manage your stress, the first order of business is understanding what, exactly, stress is. Generally, stress is defined as a negative emotional experience associated with biological changes that allow you to adapt to it. In response to stress, your adrenal glands pump out stress hormones that speed up your body - your heart rate increases and you blood sugar levels increase so that glucose can be diverted to your muscles in case you have to run. This is knoen as the fight-or-flight response.

The problem with stress hormones in the twenty-first century is that the fight-or-flight respones is not usually necessary, since most of our stress is emotional. Occasionally, we may want to flee from a bank robbery or mugger, but most of us just want to flee from our jobs or our kids! In other words, our stress hormones actually put a physical strain on our bodies and can lower our resistance to disease, which can impact the body from head to toe. We can suffer from these stress-related difficulites: headaches, gastrointestinal problems, bladder problems, heart problems, back pain, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Our strategies for coping also vary. Some women like to avoid the stress and minimize the problem. This has short-term benefits but, over the long term, the stress does not disappear. Women who confront the stress right away will feel more anxious at first, but will probably feel relief in the long run when they have dealt with it. People who suffer fewer stress-related health problems use humor, spiritual support, and social networking to deal with stress.

If the following statements sound like you, you are probably not managing stress very well: I tend to imagine all the terrible things could possibly happen to me rather than just concerning myself with the stressful situation at hand. I stop what I am doing and devote all my energy toward fixing the problem immediately. I relieve my latest crisis in my mind over and over again, even after it has been solved.

An estimated 5 percent of adults, mostly women, have a condition known as mitral valve prolapse,which causes problems for only a small number of these individuals.

Increased heart rate, abnormal heart rhythm, shortness of breath, cough, fluid buildup in the body leading to swelling of the feet and ankles or abdomen, weakness, nad fatigue are some of the signs of heart failure. These vary, depending on the severity of the failure and the part of the heart affected. A variety of drugs can be prescribed to widen blood vessels, prevent the buildup of fluids, and strengthen heart contractions. In heart failure, the heart cannot pump enough blood to meet the body's needs. This may be due to heart muscle being weakened by conditions such as high blood pressure, myocardial infarction, or a mechanical failure in the valves. Heart failure does not mean that the heart stops pumping-that's called cardiac arrest-but rather that the heart is not working efficiently.

Article Source: http://ezine-articles-planet.com

Hypertension and heart disease are also believed to be trigg by stress. Before you can look at what you can do to manage your stress, the first order of business is understanding what, exactly, stress is.

Please Rate this Article

 

Not yet Rated

Click the XML Icon Above to Receive Other Disease & Illness Articles Via RSS!


Submission Guidelines | Contact Us | Link to Us| About Us | Links Directory

© 2008 Ezine Article Planet. All Rights Reserved.
Use of our service is protected by our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service

Powered by  MyPagerank.Net

Powered by Article Dashboard