Stress & Your Heart Part 2

February 11, 2010

Interview with Dr. John M. Kennedy, author of the book The 15 Minute Heart Cure: The Natural Way to Release Stress and Heal Your Heart in Just Minutes a Day

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Mike Carruthers:
When you get stressed what does that feel like?

Dr. John M. Kennedy:
You might feel a knot in your stomach, I might feel sweaty palms or someone else might feel a racing heart beat. But that’s a cue or invitation to you to stop stress in its tracks.

Cardiologist Dr. John Kennedy, author of the book The 15 Minute Heart Cure: The Natural Way to Release Stress and Heal Your Heart in Just Minutes a Day, says we know that emotional stress can have serious and damaging effects on the heart. So how do you counteract the effects? You have to relax.

And though it seems counterintuitive, relaxation actually requires focused and conscious breathing. So I recommend you try to clear all your thoughts and concentrate on breathing. Take seven deep breaths (just like the number of letters in the word breathe) in through your nose and out through your mouth and with an emphasis on exhalation. And when you breathe correctly, in through your nose and out through your mouth and exhale, you’re stimulating the opposite of the stress response. Your heart rate is becoming lower, your blood pressure lowers and your immune system is bolstered.

But how do we know that relaxation helps your heart?

There’s a study called the lifestyle heart trial where patients with known heart disease were taught relaxation therapies and then followed over five to ten years. And we showed that patients that use relaxation skills (like guided imagery and breath work) were much less likely to develop cardiovascular complications, cardiac events and had an improved cardiac mortality compared to those that did not use relaxation techniques.
 

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here