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A Broken Heart Can Kill You

Recession Proof Your Heart

Purity of Heart

A Change of Heart

Finding The Meaning In Life

Freedom from Poor Health

Balancing Our Heart

Deepening Heart Connection

Overcoming Our Heart's Pain

Getting Your Heart On Track

Why Am I Fatigued? What Can I Do About It?

Can You Die from a Broken Heart?

What is the Ideal Cholesterol Level?

Hope for Your Broken Heart

Heart Centered Living for Health and Wellness

A Broken Heart Can Kill You

Life can be challenging, even overwhelming. Tornados strike. A debilitating illness weighs us down. Unexpectedly we lose someone we hold dear. Life has a way of stressing us to the limit of our ability to cope.

The National Institute of Health recently reported that each year over 60 Million Americans seek treatment for anxiety and depression as a result of the mental strain they experience. Women in particular seem to be particularly burdened as over 2/3 of the visits to doctors and hospitals were made by women.

May is National Women's Health Month and it's a good time to examine the powerful role that stress can have on our lives and health. What is clear is that the tension of daily living can do more than unnerve our hearts.

Sometimes hearts get broken. I don't mean broken just in the usual sense, from a relationship that has gone sour. No hearts can become cracked like a piece of delicate china.

After being battered by emotional or psychological upheavals, our hearts can become broken on the inside. Overwhelming grief or sadness can fracture our hearts.

Know what I'm talking about? Most people do. Most people have had their hearts deeply hurt in one way or another. The pain, the anguish, or heartache can be so shocking that we may feel like giving up on life.

But did you know that a broken heart could literally kill you? It's true. A broken heart can be lethal. And unfortunately, women may be at the greatest risk.

Medical researchers have recently identified a new illness called The Broken Heart Syndrome. First described in 1991 by Japanese physicians, The Broken Heart Syndrome is a medical condition that afflicts predominately middle-aged woman and leads to symptoms similar to a heart attack.

Women report chest pain, shortness of breath and feelings of severe fatigue. The symptoms are often so frightening that they seek medical help. When they present to the emergency room, they frequently have an abnormal EKG and may even be suffering with severe breathlessness and a buildup of fluid in the lungs-congestive heart failure.

A cardiac catheterization (a special x-ray test to examine the heart arteries) demonstrates that their symptoms are not a heart attack- no cholesterol deposits are present. Yet, their heart muscle is often severely weakened.

Research from Duke University published in the New England Journal of Medicine (2005) has demonstrated that excessive levels of stress hormones, particularly adrenaline like substances are circulating in the blood. Often the adrenaline levels will be 3-4 times the level commonly seen in a routine heart attack. Overwhelming stress is believed to be the culprit of this condition that can markedly reduce the heart's ability to pump blood.

Fortunately, most patients make a full recovery from the illness, but it shouldn't be taken lightly. Interestingly, The Broken Heart Syndrome is changing the way physicians view emotional health.

We used to think that feelings didn't affect us physically. We thought that the notion of being scared to death was an old wives tale or folklore. Yet, scientific research in the last few years has shown this to be untrue. Our feelings, particularly negative feelings: fear, anger, grief, loneliness, anxiety, and depression to name a few- can have a harmful effect on our physical health. They can actually create illness. A broken heart can indeed kill you!

So how does a person know if they're at risk of dying from a broken heart and what can they do to prevent it?

First, recognize that your emotion health is important. Don't discount strong feelings of discontent or inner pain.

Second, seek medical help. Your physician can help decide if your emotional state is severe enough to require the care of a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Third, take the time to get more in touch with your own feelings. Simple things like spending 15 minutes each day for personal reflection has helped many people overcome troubling emotional states.

Finally, recognize that you can improve the way you feel. Research has shown that counseling, meditation, yoga, and other self-help practices can have a positive impact on your heart health.

A Broken Heart Can Kill You, but you don't have to become a medical statistic.

You can change your life.

Kirk Laman, D.O., F.A.C.C.

Dr. Kirk Laman is a board certified, cardiologist interested in heart disease prevention. He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Michigan State University. He offers a free monthly newsletter on his website called "Mending Hearts. " His book, "How to Heal Your Broken Heart, " (http://www.HealingYourBrokenHeart.com) is designed to help people struggling with issues of the heart. Go to: www.drlaman.com for further information about Dr. Laman

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Healthy tips:

Stress & Hormones Can Affect Your Libido

One of the questions I receive most often concerns a very delicate subject: libido, or sexual drive. Human libido is a very important marker for both physical and emotional health. Disturbance in sexual drive is connected with almost all serious disorders. We need to discuss this topic and learn what we can about how we function and what a disturbance in sexual function may mean - at any age. Nearly half of women and nearly one-third of men experience sexual dysfunction, according to a survey published in an issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. So, if you have any kind of sexual difficulty, you are not alone!

Hormones: special messengers
You may recall from our discussion of menopause that hormones are messengers. They convey instructions to target tissues to respond in a specific way. When that response is met, the target tissue will often send another hormone out to say, "Mission accomplished."

There are thousands of different hormones. We know the names of some of the more familiar ones: estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, etc. These are special hormones for reproduction, but they also serve many other functions. This is a very important point.

Consider the hormone progesterone. Progesterone is produced in men, women and children. More progesterone is produced in women during childbearing years as part of the cycle of ovulation. However, progesterone is an important hormone for sexual development and libido throughout life. Interestingly, higher levels of progesterone are associated with stress resistance.

Stress: anti-progesterone, anti-libido
With higher levels of progesterone come higher levels of testosterone and DHEA, the "anti-stress" hormone. When stress increases, DHEA, progesterone and testosterone all decrease. This makes sense because stress, the so-called "fight or flight" response, is designed to save our life during a crisis. Progesterone is designed to help men and women procreate. These are not activities that usually occur at the same time. So, your body steals energy from sexual drive and donates it to the "fight or flight" response.

Stress levels go up; progesterone, testosterone and DHEA levels go down; cholesterol also goes up - all because of the hormones associated with fight or flight. Women can develop Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) and have very difficult symptoms with menopause. Men can develop an enlarged prostate gland and serious symptoms of andropause (male menopause). Both sexual drive and function will be impaired.

What to do
Hormones have a life cycle of three stages: we make them, we use them, and we detoxify them. For "making" good hormones we need to remember that good hormones are made from good cholesterol which is made from good fats. OmegaPrime contains balanced Omega fats for making healthy hormones. I suggest two per meal for several months to help rebalance the hormones, improve sexual function and reclaim sexual drive. This suggestion is for both women and men. Other sources of good fats include salmon, trout, herring, walnuts and flaxseed.

From the John Hopkins Health Report:
www.JohnHopkinsHealthAlerts.com

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