Stress and your Arteries
Arterial stiffness is the hardening of your arteries over the years. Your body has approximately 100,000 miles of arteries and veins. Their job is to transport blood.
Normally, they are flexible. Flexibility, in this case, implying the ability to change the width to accommodate more blood flowing.
What does stress have to do with arterial stiffness?
Each day, each minute, as blood flows in your body, the rate of flow is not the same. Depending on what you are doing, your body may decide to increase the rate of flow. You started walking, for example.
As the rate of blood flow changes, if the diameter of the pipes, arteries in this case, remained the same, the pressure would increase.
Therefore, arteries are flexible, to accommodate this change.
When you get stressed, your body produces adrenaline and cortisol. In the beginning, this is very useful.
But when these hormones are produced over long periods, they become problematic. One problem is that they create lesions in your arteries.
Think of lesions as scratches.
Scratches over long periods changes the nature of the walls. Normally, these walls are smooth, allowing for a friction free flowing of blood.
As scratches develop, it creates friction.
Friction creates resistance, in other words, an increase in pressure. Your blood pressure rises.
So what can you do?
The good news is that the walls of your arteries renew all the time. Every four days, in fact.
So if you could start to change your lifestyle and habits and reduce your stress, the walls of your arteries would renew.
The damaged cells would die and the friction caused by them reduce.
Easier said than done, you might say.
But in truth, chronic stress is not normal. Allowing your mind and body to feel emotions is part of being human.
But the very nature of being human gives us the ability to think and reason. To process our emotions so that we reduce the effect.
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