New ways to protect your heart....
Today's Post: Thursday, 2-18-2010
Today several news organizations ran a story that said that, “Happiness protects your heart.”
That’s NOT quite what the research reported actually said. But the good news is that what the research actually said was for more useful.
There are a considerable number of ways to feel good as there are many ways to feel bad.
The summary of the research is that people who often feel good in many of the possible ways and far less often feel bad have dramatically better heart health.
The results were close to spectacular. People low in the summary measure the researchers developed had the most heart attacks; people in the middle had an average amount; and people who were high had very few.
The key to making use of this research to protect your heart is to take specific steps to enjoy more of the good feelings and reduce the bad ones.
The good news is that IS doable. Becoming happier is so elusive and challenging people have failed at doing it for thousands of years. So, if you had to do that to protect your heart, you might not do very well!!
But you CAN do the specific things. And, if you do the ones that you find doable and use other ways to protect your heart, you can and will succeed.
So, here’s the list of positive things.:
The summary of them all the researchers called, “Positive Affect.”
“Joy, happiness, excitement, enthusiasm, and contentment” were listed and though they were not listed, enjoyment, feelings of love, and warm emotions clearly fit. Enjoyed humor also clearly fits.
The list of negative things included depression, anxiety, hostility, and anger.
1. One key to using this information is to notice and recall things you are grateful for, successes, enjoyed experiences, and things you really liked often enough it becomes a habit.
If you aren’t used to doing this, think of it as a debating exercise with the assignment of coming up with a good sized list of such things and reviewing it. There’s no need to pretend bad things don’t also exist or invent things that aren’t there. Simply come up with a list of these kinds of things that are real and write them down. Write down anything however small.
I think this advice is even in the Bible somewhere. The quote says something like, “Seek out the things that are good and of good report and THINK on these things.”
2. This can also help you in many ways if you also notice the strengths and talents of the people around you. You appreciate people more and you can often have more and accomplish more because you know who can help with certain things because they are good at them or know a lot about them.
That also makes you act more positively towards them and be more likely to forgive them their faults and moods and bad days.
Then, by being easier to like, THEY will treat you better and you’ll feel better.
3. For similar reasons, watch for opportunities to encourage people, give them sincere and specific compliments, and do specific things to make their lives go better or achieve their goals. Wish them well and say so occasionally.
Find reasons to like people and review reasons you like the people you see most often or just before you see them.
Get used to doing this until you begin to like to do it and feel good about yourself when you do.
Don’t do it with the expectation of them doing specific things for you. For entirely separate reasons they may not want to do those things or may not be able to for reasons you are unaware of. And, people get put off if they feel you are insincere and manipulative.
But if you do it often because you’ve learned to do that and just doing it makes you feel good, you’ll be natural and unstressed and be perceived as being sincere. Then people WILL be nicer to you most of the time and much more likely cut you a break when you have a bad day.
And, sometimes, they may even do what you want even better than you would have dared asked them to do.
And, each and every one of those things will make you feel good.
4. Do the other things that turn off depression or prevent it virtually everyday. All the rest of the things in this list work better and you are more likely to do them if you aren’t depressed.
In fact, both regular mild to moderate exercise such as walking or gardening -- AND quite vigorous exercise regularly every week even if for brief periods each time -- not only work better and more reliably to reduce and prevent depression, they tend to directly prevent heart disease.
Taking more than 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 is similar. People who do this, particularly in the winter and less sunny months, are far less depressed than people who don’t AND in addition to helping prevent many cancers and autoimmune diseases and keeping your bones strong, taking this much vitamin D3 helps prevent the build up of plaque and the calcification of plaque in your blood vessels and thereby directly prevents heart disease.
Similarly coming close to eliminating omega 6 oils in your diet in favor of olive oil, nuts, and other monosaturated fat AND taking both purified fish oil omega 3 supplements and eating wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils such as herring, sardines, and salmon, ALSO sharply reduces depression and tends to prevent it AND also lowers inflammation and thereby also directly prevents heart disease.
5. This one is not easy; but any success at all doing it will protect your heart and help you feel better.
Avoid the severe stresses you can avoid in part by not doing things that risk causing such bad consequences it would put you under severe stress. Stay away from really bad and mean people and always fasten your seat belt and avoid driving if you are too drunk or too sleepy are in this category.
Find a way to solve the problems that stress you.
And, take some kind of stress relief break when you need to.
Even when you are stressed or depressed find a way to speak briefly to real people and be nice to THEM.
This is unusually effective in relieving stress even when you are so stressed, you almost don’t notice it at the time. Believe it or not, even when people forced themselves to do this when asked by their psychologist to do so found they became far less depressed because of it.
This set of things ranges from not that hard to close to undoable at times. But if you make a consistent and focused effort to do what you can to do them and do the best you can and keep trying new things that might work, you’ll succeed often enough to protect your heart far better than you would have if you did not.
6. If you get angry or feel hostile, escape that state in a positive way as quickly as you can.
Type A behavior where people tend to be driven and rush like crazy does NOT cause heart disease with two exceptions.
a) If you get too anxious about the outcome as you work it can raise your blood pressure enough to harm your heart if you are always in that state. So focus on things that are moderate challenges and avoid those that are so close to impossible or risky that that kind of continuous anxiety happens to you.
b) But the state of mind that by itself directly causes heart disease is hostility. That’s why taking steps to NOT go there or escape that state quickly and in a positive way are critical.
If you find you often feel hostile or treat other people harshly because you feel hostile towards them, regardless of whether you think they deserve it or not, YOU are at severe risk for heart disease both directly because of the physical effects of hostility on your body and as strongly though indirectly is that this can often cause other people to treat you badly even sometimes when you otherwise would not deserve it.
When someone angers you, be SURE to think about reasons what they did may have TEMPORARY and specific reasons and think of what those reasons might be. Often you’ll realize that they are NOT always like that or that you hope other people will cut you some slack when YOU are that stressed or having that bad a day.
Then, ask yourself if there is any doable and UN-hostile thing you can do to improve things.
Then ask yourself it the issue is important enough to make that effort.
If you’ve done those three things and you have some idea why the bad situation might be happening; that there IS a positive thing you can try; and that it IS worth the effort to try, do that positive thing and see if it works.
If it doesn’t work, think of something else or try another time or both. But do NOT get angry or hostile with the other person. By all means let them know if you wish it were otherwise. But focusing on it or thinking to yourself that bad results always happen or punishing the other person in some way will harm your heart and will usually NOT improve things either.
Of course, there ARE some people who you simply need to avoid or escape from or even fight past a certain point if they are truly attacking you. But in most cases, YOU can do things enough better to avoid that happening with most people. If you can’t do that, YOU need to become much more positive or skilled or find a safer and saner group of people to hang out with or both.
And, if you get hostile and angry often, you either are causing it when these skills will help you avoid it most of the time instead – OR – you are living in a situation you should escape.
And, unless you live with truly horrible people or in a war zone or something of that kind, it often is YOUR skills to prevent it that need to be improved.
Lastly, if you read this far, you likely have the skill to learn from what you read.
So, if you have problems with hostility, do all the things to turn off depression as that tends to make hostility more likely and worse. Be particularly sure to eliminate omega 6 oils in your diet in favor of olive oil, nuts, and other monosaturated fat AND taking both purified fish oil omega 3 supplements and eating wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils such as herring, sardines, and salmon. This will not only protect your heart directly and reduce or prevent depression, it will help you feel dramatically less irritable which will really help.
Then read everything you can that the doctor who discovered that hostility causes heart disease wrote that you can get your hands on from Amazon.com, your local library, or a local bookstore.
Redford Williams, MD wrote a book called the “Trusting Heart” initially but has written extensively since then adding to what he found about how hostility harms the heart and how to help people learn positive and effective anger management skills.
The more you read of what he found and how to fix it, the better you’ll do.
In summary, there ARE many ways to feel good, feel better, and avoid feeling bad.
They ARE doable. YOU can do them. Some of them protect your heart indirectly in part by just making life more worth living. But some of them also work directly to protect your heart.
The best news is that you can add these things to the other things that protect your heart such as staying completely away from tobacco smoke -- and taking the supplements and in some cases the drugs that turn off conditions such as high blood pressure that increase heart attack risks.
So, if you do BOTH sets of things, your risk of heart disease will be tiny indeed.
Today's Post: Thursday, 2-18-2010
Today several news organizations ran a story that said that, “Happiness protects your heart.”
That’s NOT quite what the research reported actually said. But the good news is that what the research actually said was for more useful.
There are a considerable number of ways to feel good as there are many ways to feel bad.
The summary of the research is that people who often feel good in many of the possible ways and far less often feel bad have dramatically better heart health.
The results were close to spectacular. People low in the summary measure the researchers developed had the most heart attacks; people in the middle had an average amount; and people who were high had very few.
The key to making use of this research to protect your heart is to take specific steps to enjoy more of the good feelings and reduce the bad ones.
The good news is that IS doable. Becoming happier is so elusive and challenging people have failed at doing it for thousands of years. So, if you had to do that to protect your heart, you might not do very well!!
But you CAN do the specific things. And, if you do the ones that you find doable and use other ways to protect your heart, you can and will succeed.
So, here’s the list of positive things.:
The summary of them all the researchers called, “Positive Affect.”
“Joy, happiness, excitement, enthusiasm, and contentment” were listed and though they were not listed, enjoyment, feelings of love, and warm emotions clearly fit. Enjoyed humor also clearly fits.
The list of negative things included depression, anxiety, hostility, and anger.
1. One key to using this information is to notice and recall things you are grateful for, successes, enjoyed experiences, and things you really liked often enough it becomes a habit.
If you aren’t used to doing this, think of it as a debating exercise with the assignment of coming up with a good sized list of such things and reviewing it. There’s no need to pretend bad things don’t also exist or invent things that aren’t there. Simply come up with a list of these kinds of things that are real and write them down. Write down anything however small.
I think this advice is even in the Bible somewhere. The quote says something like, “Seek out the things that are good and of good report and THINK on these things.”
2. This can also help you in many ways if you also notice the strengths and talents of the people around you. You appreciate people more and you can often have more and accomplish more because you know who can help with certain things because they are good at them or know a lot about them.
That also makes you act more positively towards them and be more likely to forgive them their faults and moods and bad days.
Then, by being easier to like, THEY will treat you better and you’ll feel better.
3. For similar reasons, watch for opportunities to encourage people, give them sincere and specific compliments, and do specific things to make their lives go better or achieve their goals. Wish them well and say so occasionally.
Find reasons to like people and review reasons you like the people you see most often or just before you see them.
Get used to doing this until you begin to like to do it and feel good about yourself when you do.
Don’t do it with the expectation of them doing specific things for you. For entirely separate reasons they may not want to do those things or may not be able to for reasons you are unaware of. And, people get put off if they feel you are insincere and manipulative.
But if you do it often because you’ve learned to do that and just doing it makes you feel good, you’ll be natural and unstressed and be perceived as being sincere. Then people WILL be nicer to you most of the time and much more likely cut you a break when you have a bad day.
And, sometimes, they may even do what you want even better than you would have dared asked them to do.
And, each and every one of those things will make you feel good.
4. Do the other things that turn off depression or prevent it virtually everyday. All the rest of the things in this list work better and you are more likely to do them if you aren’t depressed.
In fact, both regular mild to moderate exercise such as walking or gardening -- AND quite vigorous exercise regularly every week even if for brief periods each time -- not only work better and more reliably to reduce and prevent depression, they tend to directly prevent heart disease.
Taking more than 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 is similar. People who do this, particularly in the winter and less sunny months, are far less depressed than people who don’t AND in addition to helping prevent many cancers and autoimmune diseases and keeping your bones strong, taking this much vitamin D3 helps prevent the build up of plaque and the calcification of plaque in your blood vessels and thereby directly prevents heart disease.
Similarly coming close to eliminating omega 6 oils in your diet in favor of olive oil, nuts, and other monosaturated fat AND taking both purified fish oil omega 3 supplements and eating wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils such as herring, sardines, and salmon, ALSO sharply reduces depression and tends to prevent it AND also lowers inflammation and thereby also directly prevents heart disease.
5. This one is not easy; but any success at all doing it will protect your heart and help you feel better.
Avoid the severe stresses you can avoid in part by not doing things that risk causing such bad consequences it would put you under severe stress. Stay away from really bad and mean people and always fasten your seat belt and avoid driving if you are too drunk or too sleepy are in this category.
Find a way to solve the problems that stress you.
And, take some kind of stress relief break when you need to.
Even when you are stressed or depressed find a way to speak briefly to real people and be nice to THEM.
This is unusually effective in relieving stress even when you are so stressed, you almost don’t notice it at the time. Believe it or not, even when people forced themselves to do this when asked by their psychologist to do so found they became far less depressed because of it.
This set of things ranges from not that hard to close to undoable at times. But if you make a consistent and focused effort to do what you can to do them and do the best you can and keep trying new things that might work, you’ll succeed often enough to protect your heart far better than you would have if you did not.
6. If you get angry or feel hostile, escape that state in a positive way as quickly as you can.
Type A behavior where people tend to be driven and rush like crazy does NOT cause heart disease with two exceptions.
a) If you get too anxious about the outcome as you work it can raise your blood pressure enough to harm your heart if you are always in that state. So focus on things that are moderate challenges and avoid those that are so close to impossible or risky that that kind of continuous anxiety happens to you.
b) But the state of mind that by itself directly causes heart disease is hostility. That’s why taking steps to NOT go there or escape that state quickly and in a positive way are critical.
If you find you often feel hostile or treat other people harshly because you feel hostile towards them, regardless of whether you think they deserve it or not, YOU are at severe risk for heart disease both directly because of the physical effects of hostility on your body and as strongly though indirectly is that this can often cause other people to treat you badly even sometimes when you otherwise would not deserve it.
When someone angers you, be SURE to think about reasons what they did may have TEMPORARY and specific reasons and think of what those reasons might be. Often you’ll realize that they are NOT always like that or that you hope other people will cut you some slack when YOU are that stressed or having that bad a day.
Then, ask yourself if there is any doable and UN-hostile thing you can do to improve things.
Then ask yourself it the issue is important enough to make that effort.
If you’ve done those three things and you have some idea why the bad situation might be happening; that there IS a positive thing you can try; and that it IS worth the effort to try, do that positive thing and see if it works.
If it doesn’t work, think of something else or try another time or both. But do NOT get angry or hostile with the other person. By all means let them know if you wish it were otherwise. But focusing on it or thinking to yourself that bad results always happen or punishing the other person in some way will harm your heart and will usually NOT improve things either.
Of course, there ARE some people who you simply need to avoid or escape from or even fight past a certain point if they are truly attacking you. But in most cases, YOU can do things enough better to avoid that happening with most people. If you can’t do that, YOU need to become much more positive or skilled or find a safer and saner group of people to hang out with or both.
And, if you get hostile and angry often, you either are causing it when these skills will help you avoid it most of the time instead – OR – you are living in a situation you should escape.
And, unless you live with truly horrible people or in a war zone or something of that kind, it often is YOUR skills to prevent it that need to be improved.
Lastly, if you read this far, you likely have the skill to learn from what you read.
So, if you have problems with hostility, do all the things to turn off depression as that tends to make hostility more likely and worse. Be particularly sure to eliminate omega 6 oils in your diet in favor of olive oil, nuts, and other monosaturated fat AND taking both purified fish oil omega 3 supplements and eating wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils such as herring, sardines, and salmon. This will not only protect your heart directly and reduce or prevent depression, it will help you feel dramatically less irritable which will really help.
Then read everything you can that the doctor who discovered that hostility causes heart disease wrote that you can get your hands on from Amazon.com, your local library, or a local bookstore.
Redford Williams, MD wrote a book called the “Trusting Heart” initially but has written extensively since then adding to what he found about how hostility harms the heart and how to help people learn positive and effective anger management skills.
The more you read of what he found and how to fix it, the better you’ll do.
In summary, there ARE many ways to feel good, feel better, and avoid feeling bad.
They ARE doable. YOU can do them. Some of them protect your heart indirectly in part by just making life more worth living. But some of them also work directly to protect your heart.
The best news is that you can add these things to the other things that protect your heart such as staying completely away from tobacco smoke -- and taking the supplements and in some cases the drugs that turn off conditions such as high blood pressure that increase heart attack risks.
So, if you do BOTH sets of things, your risk of heart disease will be tiny indeed.
Labels: 6 ways to prevent heart attacks, prevent cardiovascular disease, prevent heart attacks, prevent heart disease, protect your heart
posted by David at 2:33 PM
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