Manage your stress and protect your heart, Oakwood experts say

Stress is everywhere these days. In fact, it’s a lot more common than you may think.

Many people may characterize stress as a sense of overwhelming pressure or a heavy strain on your mind, but it is technically defined as anything you have to adapt to.

Everybody experiences it, no matter what they say, but not everybody manages it well—and that can be a problem. Multiple stress factors, combined and not managed, can have a long-term effect on your overall well-being.

“Stress impacts  all of us,” said Dr. Peter Mancini, MD, FACC, an Oakwood-affiliated cardiovascular disease specialist. “It’s not the problems we’re in, it’s our inability to cope with those problems, and that has a physiological affect on our body: our body produces adrenaline; our blood pressure will increase; our heart rate will increase. Our risk of heart disease increases when we have all this stress going on.”

Fortunately, you can manage your stress throughout the day with a few quick tips, and nobody around you will even notice.

The first thing to do is to be aware that you’re experiencing physical symptoms of stress, said Kathryn Maximiuk, a wellness specialist with the YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit. Oakwood and the YMCA partner on several classes and services at the Oakwood Physical Therapy and Wellness Center in Dearborn.

“Your body responds to stress before you realize it,” she said. Ask yourself: are your muscles tense? That’s the first step in finding out why.

If you determine that you’re having a physical reaction to stress factors, there are several steps you can take to relax. The first is deep breathing exercises, such as abdominal breathing. Abdominal breathing is where you use your entire abdomen to slowly take in and release a breath. Rest your hand against your belly and try to push it as far up as you can, then exhale.

“It’s the quickest way to elicit a relaxation response in your body,” said Maximiuk. “It helps normalize your heart rate and reduces muscle tension.”

Relaxing your eyes may help, too. Don’t just close them for five minutes or so, press your palms against them to completely block out the light.

Visualization and imagination techniques are effective, too. Sketch an image, and ask yourself why you can’t relax. Conjure up an image, either mentally or on paper, that symbolizes your stress factors and then replace it with a happier image.

Of course, there is always the tried and true ‘special place,’ a sort of mental relaxation refuge that you can create and tap when the everyday stressors of life pile up. Don’t just summon an image of, say, a lakeside cottage or beach front resort, fill it with memories, smells and other details.

“When you create a place, you want to fill it with sensation,” said Maximiuk.

Meditation is another, perhaps stronger, form of these techniques. Meditation is where you intentionally focus your attention on one thing at a time and that process also triggers relaxation responses in your body. Repeat a word or phrase over and over while counting your breath: in on the odd numbers, out with the even. Maximiuk suggests getting grounded before you start: sit up straight with your feet flat on the floor and your ‘sitting bones’ flat on your chair.

“Even if you only do these things five minutes a day, it’s still going to be effective,” she said.