Best Way To Handle Stress

You can’t control whether or when pressure hits. But you can control how you react, which is crucial to protecting your good health. Use our experts’ advice to navigate those tense times.

- Toni Gerber Hope

Stress is a fact of life. That can be a good thing, giving you the push you need to meet a work deadline, pack for a trip, or do laundry before you run out of clean underwear. But a steady stream of tension whether constant fights with a partner or a crushing workload takes a toll on your health, particularly your heart.

“Just like high blood pressure or diabetes, stress is a risk factor for heart disease because it can cause infl ammation and hinder blood flow to the heart,” says Dr. Jennifer H. Mieres, professor of cardiology at US-based Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine. The drip-drip-drip of daily stressors hits women particularly young ones especially hard. “Cases of heart disease haven’t been declining in women younger than age 55 like they have in older women,” says Dr. Viola Vaccarino, chair of the department of epidemiology at Emory University School of Public Health, US. “And stress is part of the problem.”

Research shows that women’s hearts do not weather it well. One study of cardiac patients, in fact, found that the blood flow to the heart of young women dropped about twice as much as men’s when they felt tense and anxious. The key to easing the impact: Build in strategies to manage stress so that you will guard against the negative eff ects of whatever it is that comes your way.

STRESS MANAGEMENT

Four experts give lots of realistic ways to cope with life’s pressures, so you can safeguard your heart and your overall health.

The mind-body guru

AGGIE CASEY, co-author of Mind Your Heart; nurse manager, cardiac rehabilitation, Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, US.