So, a few weeks ago I ended up in emergency with chest pains and scared that I was having a heart attack. Unfortunately I come from a family where members just drop dead from this condition every now and then, so when I felt this unwell and was having symptoms that triggered in my brain ‘heart attack’, I didn’t wait to find out if I was becoming a member of the family tradition, I went immediately to the hospital.
Once we arrived at the hospital I straight away had my vitals checked and when the doctors and nurses didn’t go into resurrection mode I realised that I was not in immediate danger….but I was still scared.

In the following hours I was tested….x-ray, cardiography, blood tests…….
After 3 hours a very caring doctor, who thankfully spoke English, came to tell me that I hadn’t had a heart attack but because of my symptoms he wanted me to go through a series of tests and meet him again in two weeks.

I thought I was just working too hard, not dealing with my stress levels and in need of a Summer holiday. All good. Not.

The scare did make me reassess my current work load, enough that I resigned from a project that had been causing me much anxiety and started to think more about my priorities and life work balance.

So, when I went back to the very caring doctor after passing all the tests I was confident that he would tell me to rest, have a holiday and be pleased about my life style changes…..wrong.

This is what he explained:

Our body is still wired like that of a primitive man. When the mind and body acknowledges stress it prepares us to run, as this is what we would have done to save ourselves from danger a few hundred thousand years ago. The body produces fat and sugar in the blood stream so that you have the energy to run. It also produces platelets so incase you get caught or hurt your blood will clot.

The constant levels of these biochemical reactions in our body creates plaque in our hearts, raises our blood sugar levels and can produce clots in the blood stream.

The thing is a little stress in our lives doesn’t kill us, but ongoing and long term stress is proven to cause heart disease, heart attacks, diabetes and stokes.

So despite being fit, having a good diet and being a non smoker my very caring doctor informed me that if I didn’t modify my life style and reduce my stress levels significantly immediately I was in danger of having a heart attack or a stroke….some what like those executives that you hear about who have it all and just drop dead for no apparent reason at 45 years old.

So now it all made sense to me. It was a perfectly logical explanation and it forced me to face the fact that my body was giving me the warning signs that enough was enough. Manage the stress levels or I’m going to break. Which is exactly what I have done. I want to live a long and healthy life and I do not want to live with disease caused through a preventable cause – STRESS.

And I wondered why we do not explain this reasoning to all of us who have trouble managing our stress levels….if we don’t it is at our own risk, even if you are fit and healthy.