Hypertension and Heart Disease

There are special cells in the heart that act as a natural pacemaker, sending electrical signals through their fibers to the heart muscle and regulating the heartbeat. An electrocardiogram reproduces these electrical patterns as a tracing. When there is a disturbance in any part of this conduction system, the heart may beat irregularly, or the rate may become either very slow or very fast. Irregular heartbeats can be life threatening in some cases, because the heart is unable to pump blood efficiently.

How stressed you become has much to do with your personality as well. For example, if you have a negative outlook on life, you will probably feel more stress than someone with a positive attitude. Some women like to find meaning in uncontrollable events, which gices them a sense of control. Others like the challenge of difficult situations.

Our strategies for coping also vary. Some women like to avoid the stress and minimize the problem. This has short-term benefits but, over the long term, the stress does not disappear. Women who confront the stress right away will feel more anxious at first, but will probably feel relief in the long run when they have dealt with it. People who suffer fewer stress-related health problems use humor, spiritual support, and social networking to deal with stress.

The death of a loved one can sometimes lead to personal growth because we may see something about ourselves we did not see before - new resilience, for example. So even a death can be a good stress, though we grieve and are sad in the short run.

Stress reduction depends entirely on the source of your stress. The only way to control stress that is beyond your control is to modify your response to it. For many women, this takes time and may require some work with a qualified counselor. If you are the source of your own stress because you are too hard on yourself, or are a perfectionist, you need to work on lowering your self-expectations and forgiving yourself for not being perfect.

Increased heart rate, abnormal heart rhythm, shortness of breath, cough, fluid buildup in the body leading to swelling of the feet and ankles or abdomen, weakness, nad fatigue are some of the signs of heart failure. These vary, depending on the severity of the failure and the part of the heart affected. A variety of drugs can be prescribed to widen blood vessels, prevent the buildup of fluids, and strengthen heart contractions. In heart failure, the heart cannot pump enough blood to meet the body's needs. This may be due to heart muscle being weakened by conditions such as high blood pressure, myocardial infarction, or a mechanical failure in the valves. Heart failure does not mean that the heart stops pumping-that's called cardiac arrest-but rather that the heart is not working efficiently.

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Hypertension and heart disease are also believed to be trigg by stress. Before you can look at what you can do to manage your stress, the first order of business is understanding what, exactly, stress is.

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