5 ways to de-stress and help your heart
5 ways to de-stress and help your heart= Managing unhealthy habits key to change - Constant stress — whether from a traffic-choked daily commute, unhappy marriage, or heavy workload — can have real physical effects on the body. It has been linked to a wide range of health issues, including mood, sleep, and appetite problems — and yes, even heart disease. Doctors don't know exactly how chronic stress affects the heart. Most likely, stress triggers inflammation, a known instigator of heart disease, but that hasn't been proven. "I think the conventional opinion is that stress is bad for your heart, but the data are much murkier," says Dr. Deepak Bhatt, director of the Integrated Interventional Cardiovascular Program at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Yet stress may influence heart disease in more subtle ways. "Stress does cause some people to act in ways that increase their risk for heart disease," Dr. Bhatt says. For example, when stress...