You will be familiar with the common notion of relating emotions to the heart. However, as far as our knowledge of the human body goes, our mind is solely responsible for developing emotions. Although emotions originate in our minds, they profoundly affect the whole body, especially our hearts. We all are accustomed to the racing heartbeat when we are excited. Similarly, when we feel down, we can also sense our hearts clenching. Therefore, there may be a relation between AFib and stress. We will explore this relationship in this article and discuss some ways to cope up with stress.
What Does Stress Mean?
Stress on your body induces a fight or flight response. It’s a handy reaction that helped our ancestors escape from imminent danger, and it even helps us today to elude near-death experiences like a car collision.
During fight and flight response, our bloodstream is flooded with adrenaline. Adrenaline has a massive impact on our body like it increases the heartbeat or makes us more alert. However, trauma, workload, or financial crises can expose our bodies to high-stress levels and similar fight and flight reactions.
Consequently, constant stress is bad for our health and mental well-being. Most of the time, increased stress translates to a higher risk of stroke, heart attack, arrhythmia, and much more.
The Complicated Relation Between Stress And AFib:
During times of stress, many patients experience longer AFib episodes or experience AFib with increased severity. The other way around is also true that people with AFib encounter increased levels of stress. Stress doesn’t directly cause AFib, but our body’s counter to stress increases the risk of an AFib episode. For example, increased blood pressure and heart rate can lead to an AFib episode. Stress can sometimes trigger AFib episodes in a healthy heart; luckily, this type of AFib episode is short-lived, making them difficult to track.
How To Cope With Stress:
Coping with stress will inevitably help you with your mental and cardiac health; here is what you can do:
Balance Your Worklife: All work and no play? We know you cannot abandon the grind, but you shouldn’t abandon your health either. We suggest you take some well-timed breaks and vacations to get out of work stress.
Exercise Regularly: You shouldn’t neglect your body’s need for exercise, even twenty minutes of daily walking may do the trick. Exercising will help you flush out negative emotions and stress hormones.
Eat Healthily: You are what you eat, so have a great diet plan and routine. A balanced diet leads to a well-nourished body that copes with stress quite well. Additionally, try not to rely on caffeine or nicotine to cope with stress; they make stress worse in the long term.
Connect With Those Who Care About You: It’s never too late to hit up with family or friends about what’s bothering you. Sometimes a good listening year is all you need.
These are the primary ways that can help you out with stress coping. While you cope up with stress, it’s also important to keep AFib under control too. AFib centers of America can help you with that; you can call us at 832-478-5067 to learn more about how we can help.