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Is Your Heart at Risk? Uncovering The Hidden Dangers of Stress

• me&my wellness / Anthony Hartcher • Season 1 • Episode 212

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Have you ever wondered how stress impacts your heart health?

In this insightful episode of me&my health up, host Anthony Hartcher dives deep into the hidden dangers of stress on heart health. Chronic stress is more than just a mental burden; it has profound implications for our cardiovascular well-being, potentially leading to serious conditions like coronary artery disease (CAD). Anthony explores the intricate connection between psychological stress and heart health, backed by research and personal experience.

Discover how chronic stress triggers inflammation, damages the arteries, and contributes to plaque build-up. Learn practical and effective strategies to manage stress, reduce inflammation, and protect your heart. Anthony shares valuable insights on mindfulness, relaxation techniques, and lifestyle changes that can help you maintain a healthy heart.

Don't miss this enlightening discussion that not only highlights the risks of chronic stress but also offers actionable tips to safeguard your heart health. Tune in now to understand the vital link between stress and heart health and take proactive steps towards a healthier, stress-free life.


About me&my health up & Anthony Hartcher

me&my health up seeks to enhance and enlighten the well-being of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my wellness which provides holistic health solutions using food as medicine, combined with a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor's degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering.

Podcast Disclaimer
Any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for more

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Anthony Hartcher:

Welcome back to another insightful and exciting episode of me&my health up. I'm your host, Anthony Hartcher. I'm a clinical nutritionist and lifestyle medicine specialist. The purpose of this podcast is to enhance and enlighten your well-being. And today, I have the privilege of doing that for you. And we're going to be talking about psychological stress and its impact on heart health. And in a previous episode, I spoke about my heart health and I was a bit bamboozled, confused, bewildered as to what's driven my heart disease, my coronary artery disease, what's driven it? well, you know, what could be the, you know, the primary cause? Or what is some of the causative factors that could have got me down this path of coronary artery disease? And so obviously, you you dig deep, and you're looking for answers like we all do. We're humans, we seek meaning and purpose. And we want to understand why. And I'm always that person that asked why. And in this research I'm sharing, it is from the IO medicine. And this Yellow Medicine research shares how stress can be the leading cause of heart disease. And so this paper that was published on the aisle Medicine website, talks about the impacts of psychological stress on the heart, and how it could be primarily the leading cause of heart disease and in particulary coronary artery disease. So what is coronary artery disease? It's the build up of plaque in the endothelial under the endothelial layer of the artery, and that plaque builds up and it provides an obstruction for blood flow into the heart or out of the heart. In my case, it's both. And so I'm thinking about, Okay, what's caused that build up of plaque? So there's many causative or associated causative factors to the build up of plaque. One is physical inactivity, which I certainly don't, I'm very active. So that's certainly not a factor for me, but for others that are sedentary. Yes, this could be a factor. The other one is obesity. I certainly I'm a lean mass body. I've always been that way. And so that obesity is a ruled out for me. However, for others, it might be a contributing factor. The other one's smoking. Well, I haven't smoked. I'm a nonsmoker. Yet, I still have this build up of plaque for others. Yeah, the smoking could be a driving factor. And it was once believed that smoking was the number one driving factor behind it. Yep, smoking rates have declined. And heart rates or heart disease has escalated. So with declining smoking rates and escalating heart disease, it sort of doesn't make sense that it's, you know, the primary cause. And with anything I found in life, it's multifactorial. We look for the one cause or just the one thing but in actual fact, it doesn't work that way. It's multifactorial. And so as much as I'm looking for my one cause, it's not. It's multifactorial. There's a genetic factor to this, and I certainly have the genetic factor. Well, I haven't been tested for the genetic factor, but heart disease does run in my family. So without having done testing, I could say there's a high likelihood that I have some genetic factor associated with heart disease. And then there's hypercholesterolemia. So hypercholesterolemia is high cholesterol. And yes, I have a family history of high cholesterol. So I have a couple of these factors. I have well, there's three of the factors I have. So I have certainly hypercholesterolemia. I believe I have a genetic component. Yet remember, genetics just loads the gun. It's the environment that fires it or triggers it. And it's the stress element, I think I believe that primarily behind what's triggered my genetic predisposition to heart disease is the stress because the stress drives inflammation. And as this article by Dr. Erica Gaffney and Geffrey, Dr. Erica Geffrey. And it talks about that this psychological stress is probably one of the most leading factors of why we're seeing higher rates of heart disease. They're looking at America statistics, but America statistics pretty much correlate well with Australia, we very much follow America, or we lead America. And so your poor diet is also another contributory factor, which I haven't had, I've certainly had a really healthy diet. And the other one that I haven't spoken about is diabetes, and I don't have diabetes. So insulin resistance, or elevated blood glucose is a driver behind coronary artery disease, both of which, you know, poor diet or diabetes, I don't have. But I do have three factors. And obviously, they're all contributing to my current position. And so I wanted to talk about the psychological stress component, because generally, that is something we ignore because we see everyone else so stress, and we think it's just the modern world, or we just think it is the way of life. Stress is the way of life. And the stress I'm talking about isn't acute stress, it's chronic stress. So it's the chronic inflammation because coronary artery disease is a chronic disease. It happens over time over decades. So it's not something that happens overnight. This didn't happen to me overnight. It's happened to me over decades. And it's the chronic stress. And chronic stress is prolonged stress for long periods of time that is driven the inflammation that is damaged my cardial layer above the endothelial layer. And so I've damaged through the inflammation of having chronic stress, damage the endothelial layer, which has allowed, I guess, fatty acids, cholesterol to enter into under the endothelial layer. And it's the inflammation that's driven that because it's broken that layer of protection, we have the endothelial layer. And so it's the chronic inflammation driven by the chronic stress that has broken that layer of protection and allow plaque to build up under the endothelial layer, which has then provided some obstruction to the artery. So that is my position and chronic stress, let's talk about chronic stress in terms of the causations and what we can do about it. So chronic stress is anything that you perceive that has more downsides than upsides or there has a an outcome that is not great in terms of a survival mechanism, that outcome that was not great was death. And so we're wired. In essence, when we perceive more negative than positive, we're wired that it's a threat to our life, it's a threat to our livelihood. And that's how we're wired. And so regardless of what the stress is, today, the stress isn't the tiger, the stress could be your battery draining on your phone, and you're all concerned about being without a phone that can be a stress. And so you see more disadvantages than advantages of being without the phone. And that leads to a physiological response in the body where it produces these adrenaline. So adrenaline, noradrenaline induce a response that gets the body ready to flee a situation or to fight a situation or just to completely freeze. And it's a protective response to the stress. And that's why some people freeze when they're under a lot of stress and don't do anything. Some people run away from the stress, avoid the stress, others go into it and take it on head on. So there's three different ways in which we can respond to this psychological or physical, you know, these stress that we're perceiving from the environment. And it doesn't matter what your response is, the response is the same within the body, the body is preparing itself, for protecting its life. And in preparation for protecting its life, what it's doing is elevating heartbeat, getting more oxygen around to the muscles, because it's the muscles that are going to help you fight the tiger, it's the muscles that are going to help you get away from the tiger, escape from the tiger, or it's the muscles that are going to hold you still in a pose, like a frozen pose that you know for prolonged periods of time so that the tiger perceives you as dead. So it doesn't matter how we respond to it. The fact is that it's stressed now that's fine if it's short-term. So we're designed to deal with the short-term stresses like this tiger that suddenly appears and we run and get away from it and then we relax. And then we go along and we're continuing on our day and we might confront a bear and then we get away from that, and then we relax. So our bodies designed to take on these environmental stressors, but only for short periods of time for short bursts, not for prolonged periods of time. So what we need to do is managed these constant stressors in our life and deal with them. Like for example, if it's constant workload, then looking at ways in which you can better allow the body to cope with that constant workload. If the workload is constantly them, there's not much you can do about the workload, how can you look after your body and allow it to calm and relax. And so that's doing restorative practices like mindfulness, it's allowing yourself a bit of me time doing the things that you love, that will calm that will bring down that heart rate, that will relax the heart, that will relax the muscles. So whatever that is for you, it's doing that on a consistent basis, so that you can deal with the prolonged stresses in life, what you don't want to be doing is constantly fighting, constantly fighting, not sleeping, not recuperating, that's going to wear on the heart, that chronic inflammation is going to damage that endothelial layer, and allow the plaque to build up which then calcifies and becomes hardened, and therefore you've got this obstructive artery. And so we don't want that. And in the acute situation, what can happen is that a soft plaque is forming. But that acute situation of you know, really severe and acute stress can allow that soft plaque to rupture. And that's when a clot can form, a clot can block the flow of blood to the heart or the blood out of the heart, or it can end up in the brain, which results in a stroke. And so these blood clots that come from the soft plaque rupturing can cause a stroke, or a heart attack. And that's what we don't want. So we really want to manage the chronic inflammation, the chronic stress, and also manage our acute stress and our response to that. And so in the upcoming episodes, I'm going to be talking about how we can better deal with this psychological stress, in order to allow our heart to relax, and not get damaged, how to protect those arteries from being damaged, what causes them to damage, like prolonged high blood pressure, prolonged high blood pressure can damage the arteries, the lack of sunlight can put too much of a load on the heart. And so I'm going to be talking about how you can get good light exposure to reduce the load on the heart to protect the heart. So to stop the heart from overworking, because we don't want arrhythmia or either either so and you know, so we don't want any of these forms of heart disease or heart dysfunction. And so, in the upcoming episodes, I'm going to talk about how we can better manage psychological stress so that we can protect our heart, we can protect our brain, and we can live longevity, it's really important that we have these protective factors in our life. And we're doing them consistently to deal with the psychological stresses because sometimes the psychological stresses we cannot eliminate, they're constant, and they're going to be constant for a period of time. So it's important that we come up with protective ways to dealing with those stresses. And so stay tuned for upcoming episodes on how to protect your heart, protect your brain, protect your body, and, you know, protect your longevity, and your energy because the other thing these these stresses that we're not dealing with will drain our energy and will become energy depleted. So stay tuned for upcoming episodes on how to deal with psychological stress so that you can protect your heart and live a long, happy and healthy life. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for more insightful episodes of me&my health up.

Podcast Disclaimer:

This podcast and any information, advice, opinions, or statements within it do not constitute medical healthcare or professional advice and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this podcast. Connected Wellness Proprietary Limited operating under the brand "me&my health up" does not make any representations or give any warranties about its accuracy, reliability, completeness or suitability for any particular purpose. This podcast and any information, advice, opinions or statements within it are not to be used as a substitute for professional medical, psychological, psychiatric, or any other mental healthcare or healthcare in general. me&my health up recommends you seek the advice of a doctor or qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Inform your doctor of any changes that you make to your lifestyle and discuss these with your doctor. Do not disregard medical advice or delay visiting a medical professional because of something you hear in this podcast. This podcast has been carefully prepared on the basis of current information. Changes in circumstances after publication may affect the accuracy of this information. To the maximum extent permitted by the law, me&my health up disclaims any such representations or warranties to the completeness, accuracy, merchantability or fitness for purpose of this podcast and will not be liable for any expenses, losses, damages incurred indirect or consequential damages or costs that may be incurred as a result of the information being inaccurate or incomplete in any way and for any reason. No part of this podcast can be reproduced, redistributed, published, copied or duplicated in any form without prior permission of me&my health up.