Lowering Cholesterol by Reducing Stress

Stress has become a part of our daily lives. Many of us are in a rush to get to work and when we are there we are pushed to meet quotas and/or goals. We want a raise in salary and we undergo more stress. Life for us has become stressful.

The risk factors for heart disease are: Age (risk increases with age), Family history (if your parents suffer with heart disease you probably will also), Smoking (a definite killer, High blood pressure, Being overweight, Physical Inactivity, and Diabetes.

It always strikes me as strange that stress is not classified as one of the heart-disease risk factors. Many heart doctors point out that stress can trigger a heart attack. If one undergoes an emotionally traumatic event, and that person has plaque buildup in his or her arteries, part of that plaque may break free and cause a clog resulting in the death of heart muscle and a consequent heart attack.

So how we deal with stress is important. Many people use physical exercise to alleviate stress. Thirty minutes or more a day of good, heart-beating aerobic activity for five or more days a week will strengthen the heart and the circulatory system. Remember to check with your doctor first before starting an exercise program.

Regular and continuous exercise will lower the effects of at least two risk factors such as being overweight and high blood cholesterol. The more calories you will burn as a result of exercising will reduce your weight. And exercise has been shown to raise HDL good cholesterol levels and thereby lower total cholesterol.

Meditation by itself or in conjunction with physical exercise has been shown to reduce stress. There are many books that can teach you how to meditate properly and reduce the stress of everyday living.

Good personal relationships help to reduce stress. The support one draws from having good relationships cannot be overestimated. Voicing and sharing stressful problems with others can be mentally helpful. Keeping it all bottled up inside will only feed the beast. It has been stated that developing strong personal ties reduces the chances of developing heart disease. Opening up and expressing ones feelings to a trusted friend will do a lot to defuse the stress bomb that may be growing inside of you.

Other things to do to manage stress:

Keep a positive attitude - negativity only leads to more depressing feelings. Warm fuzzy feelings are good for you - try to generate them.

Praise yourself - accentuate the positive things, the successful things you do. Get high on these successes and stay there for days.

Accept what you cannot change. You can't fight city hall as the saying goes. Banging ones head against a stone wall does no one any good. Find a positive way of dealing with the situation. Perhaps finding a new job would be better for you.

Practice relaxation skills. Laugh as much as you can. For periods of time every day, push aside stress and just relax. Talk and think of other things. It's a big world with many wonderful things going on.

If you harbor hostility, find help. Hostility feeds stress, makes it worse helps it to achieve higher, world-record, explosive levels. Curmudgeons are just walking time bombs. If a person is so angry that he or she is always ready to fight, just imagine how high that person's blood pressure must be - all the time. Seek help to dissolve hostile feelings.

Stress can be managed. It only takes a positive approach to dealing with it. The result will be a lowering of your cholesterol.

Rate Article

Related Videos
Play Video How Does Stress Affect Women's Hearts	Play Video How to Make a Stress Test	Play Video Why Stress Tests Are Important For a Woman’s Heart Health	Play Video Stress and Heart Health	Play Video What the Treadmill Stress Test Indicates

Listed below are more articles related to the above article from the "Cholesterol" article category.

People interested in the above article "Lowering Cholesterol by Reducing Stress" are also interested in the related articles listed below:

 

How to Reduce Cholesterol using Home Remedies

There are two types of blood cholesterol: Low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and High-density lipoproteins (HDL). LDLs are bad because they are the ones responsible for deposit of plaque on the arteries walls. Deposit of plaque reduces the diameter of the artery and thereby restricts flow of blood through it. Therefore it can increase the risk of heart disease. HDLs are good because they remove cholesterol from arteries walls and carry it back to the liver to be excreted. Therefore HDLs in the blood can decrease the risk of heart disease.

Read About High Cholesterol

High Cholesterol is a very common diagnosis by doctors nowadays when dealing with patients. Cholesterol has been identified as to increase the risk of heart diseases. But what is Cholesterol at all? Cholesterol is a substance produced by the human liver. The body produces Cholesterol to build up acids that help with the digestion of fat that we eat with our meals.

Lipitor - Common Statin Side Effects

Statins are known currently to be by far the most effective medications for the lowering of high blood cholesterol levels. However this comes with a price. The usage of statins may be accompanied by statin side effects such as muscle damage, liver damage and gastrointestinal symptoms. The degree of damage, however is usually mild and reversible by discontinuation of the drug.

Cholesterol Lowering Diet - Healthy Eating

Cholesterol lowering foods are foods that are low in dietary cholesterol, but also low in saturated fat. Saturated fat is the key because it affects your cholesterol level far more than dietary cholesterol. Saturated fats can produce as much as 4 times more cholesterol in your blood than dietary cholesterol.

Diet for High Cholesterol - Effective Natural Cure

Are you suffering with high blood cholesterol level? In addition to proper medication, diet also plays an important role in lowering high cholesterol. As soon as high cholesterol levels are found in someone without heart disease, they should begin a diet recommended by the American Heart Association that states a person should consume less than 300 milligrams of dietary cholesterol per day. They should also limit saturated fats to 10 per cent or less of total calories and normal fats 30 per cent or less of total calories.

Control Your Blood Sugar Levels with the Right Grains

The right grains for breakfast may have an important contribution to the blood sugar regulation after meals because certain grain products may have indigestible carbohydrates and a low glycemic index (GI), according to a dissertation from the Lund University.

Low Cholesterol Diet Plan for Healthy Hearts

A high cholesterol level has been linked with a number of diseases. There are many factors that contribute to the increase in cholesterol level. The most prominent among them is to following a diet that is high in saturated fat. Prolonged intake of fat foods, lack of exercises, smoking and drinking habits can contribute to the unhealthy increase of LDL (bad cholesterol).