Your Emotions and Your Health

Let me start out by saying that I realize it may feel strange to discuss cardiovascular problems in the context of your emotions. Your feelings are probably not something you ever thought of as heart risk factors.  This is why I want to make you aware of how the “lesser known” heart risk factor—your mind—affects your body. And I want you to take advantage of new information that could dramatically improve your healing process.

I’m not surprised that your doctor or even your holistic practitioner may not have told you much about heartbreak’s role in heart disease. Heartbreak is not considered a medical “condition” because love is not a recognized physical function. Until recently, physiology has limited itself to the mechanics and chemistry of how organs work and has ignored the impact of various emotional states on those functions. Science is necessarily confined to phenomena that can be measured and quantified.

Although the feeling states lie outside the realm of science, I think it’s a mistake to exclude them from our understanding of the human body. Love is a tremendously vital force in human behavior, and I firmly believe that we must try to understand its nature and the role it plays in our emotional and physical health.

I want to make it clear that love and intimacy cannot “cure” heart disease. But if you learn to cope with heartbreak, anger, or resentment, rather than suppressing the feelings, you’ll be doing your heart a world of good. You will harness the power of your emotions to heal your body. Honesty, tears, and smiles have as much to do with recovering from heart disease as eating well, exercising, and taking vitamins.

For more information on how the role between emotions and heart risk factors, visit www.drsinatra.com.