Category Archives: Stress

A Trusting Heart Is a Healthy Heart

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Stephen Boyle of Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina says that people who are cynical, suspicious of other people and their motives, are 25% more likely to develop heart disease. Boyle postulates that distrust of others creates greater stress and hostility, which can cause spikes in an immune-system protein called C3 that has been linked with various diseases, including diabetes. The participants (more than 300 Vietnam War veterans) with higher scores on hostility showed an increase in these proteins, while the non-hostile men showed no such increase.

Make Stress Sit Up and Beg

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Tired of stress running your life? It’s time to take the upper hand! You can use SweetBeat to monitor heart rate variability (HRV) to reduce your overall levels of stress. If you monitor your HRV on a regular basis, you will soon start recognizing recurring stressors such as commuting or listening to the person in the next cubicle complain.  You can use SweetBeat’s Relax screen to reduce stress in real time. You can also change your exposure to stressors—OK, you still have to commute, but you could listen to music through earphones rather than to the complainer next door.

Over time, as you become more adept at stress reduction, you may find that your overall HRV is higher, indicating lower stress levels. You might even have to reduce your SweetBeat setting for stress sensitivity to compensate for the improvement in your body’s response to stress!