Better Breathing Blog by PowerLung

Every year at this time there is a an emphasis on heart health. Three years ago an article published by Johns Hopkins forecast the following:

This year, about 600,000 Americans will have a heart attack for the first time and another 320,000 will have a repeat attack. About one fifth of them will die.

...take steps to identify and control many of the risk factors associated with a heart attack—from high cholesterol and elevated blood pressure to overweight and obesity. Many of these risk factors can be dealt with by making simple changes in your lifestyle. Some of the most important—quitting smoking, starting an exercise routine, watching what you eat, and moderating your alcohol intake-...

No matter what we are doing for our heart health there always seems to be something new. What is new now is that at least in America we are taking our eating more seriously and have even begun to lose weight on a national level. Underlying all the new information are some basics that never seem to change:

• Manage stress
• Stop smoking
• Start exercising
• Watch what you eat

It's easy enough to make the list. It seems much harder for us to actually make a change. Recently at lunch, a young lady was describing her plans to change her "eating lifestyle" at the end of her description the young lady's friend said "I can change anything but my lifestyle." Changing something basic typically does not require a lot of money, but does require each of us to commit to change our behavior and therefore our lifestyle.

In this feature, we want to talk about just one aspect of heart health: Managing Stress. Specifically how to use PowerLung to change or avoid using negative stress management behaviors. As you will see, if you are not managing stress you may develop or reinforce habits that are unhealthy for your heart . Or, as important, have a friend or loved one who is. So this newsletter we will focus on some common unhealthy ways people manage stress and how other users have used PowerLung to change their behavior and lifestyle to exclude these behaviors.