How Stress Affects Your Heart

The American Heart Association is engaged in researching how stress affects your heart, but has shown how it can affect behaviors and factors that increase your risk for heart disease–the leading cause of death in America. How we choose to handle the stress in our lives greatly determines how healthy or heart remains.  Some people choose to turn to alcohol, smoking, overeating and other negative options to cope with the stresses they feel. But, these habits can increase blood pressure and damage artery walls. High blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, smoking, and physical inactivity are some of the leading causes for heart disease. At Texas Spine and Sports Therapy Center we offer you stress treatments and prevention strategies to safeguard the health of your heart.  

Where is Your Stress Coming From?

One of the most effective way for combating stress-related heart and body conditions and problems is to try and eliminate the trigger(s). Stress can be caused by a variety of factors that are linked to lifestyle choices/habits (smoking, poor posture), systemic or localized infections, injuries, muscular trauma, psychological disorders (anxiety and depression) and muscle overload from either one incident or recurrent incidents.  Part of our long-term stress treatment is pinpointing what is causing your stress and finding healthy ways for you to avoid or release it.

Chronic Stress and What it Does

Chronic stress is particularly dangerous for heart health because of the effects it has on your body. Stress causes your body to release adrenaline–a powerful hormone that also triggers your heart rate and blood pressure to become elevated. Chronic stress and adrenaline releases tax your system.  While there is still much to understand about heart disease and the relationship between the amount of stress in your life and heart health, what you do when you are stressed is key.  The American Heart Association warns against behaviors and factors (turning to alcohol, cigarettes, or food to cope) that are brought on by stress that increase your heart disease risks. Unhealthy reactions to stress can lead to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, physical inactivity and overeating. Damage to artery walls is a common result of these unhealthy behaviors. Learning to eliminate stress and cope with it in a healthy way is essential for reducing your risk for heart disease or heart-related problems. In the short term, stress can cause headaches, back strains, knotted muscles, and stomach pains.  It can also rob your energy stores and disrupt your sleep patterns. Stress causes memory struggles and can lead to feelings of anxiety and mood disorders.

Stress Treatments to Improve Heart Health

Texas Spine & Sports Therapy Center offers several different stress treatment options to lighten the burden put on your body from stress and help reduce the stress you are feeling.  During your initial consultation, we can work out a stress treatment plan that addresses what is triggering your stress and find healthy ways to reduce it. The following therapies are used at our Austin clinic to help reduce the effects of stress on your body and heart.

• Myotherapy, which can involve deep tissue massage or a tapping pressure
• Vibration exercises to relax tensed muscles all at once and lower cortisol levels
• Electrostimulation to calm irregular nerve signals, restore blood flow and reduce pain symptoms
• Massage therapy to work out knotted muscles
• Assisted and home stretching to help relieve stress at home
• Injections to help break down the scar tissue and reduce muscle tightness

Call for a Stress Treatment and Reduction Consultation

Safeguard the health of your heart with a stress treatment and stress reduction consultation. Our Texas Spine and Sports Therapy Center team includes a medical doctor, chiropractor, and experienced massage therapists allowing us the opportunity to give you a full range of services without sending you out of the office. If you have been struggling with inflammation and tenderness that doesn’t have a clear cause, we may be able to pinpoint the muscles involved and relax the tension.  Call (512) 806-0015 today to schedule your free consultation!