By Penelope A. Domogo, MD
Happy Hearts Month, everyone! It’s the season to talk about the heart. You have two kinds of hearts. Your figurative heart and your physical heart. Your figurative heart can break many times but you can pick up the pieces and put them together again and be whole. But why go into the trouble of picking up and mending when you can avoid heartbreak. Here are some age-old tested ways of avoiding heartaches and heartbreaks – 1) Keep your feet on the ground and keep your expectations of others, including your partner, at a minimum and realistic and 2) Think first before jumping into relationships, you are a complete person and you don’t need another person to complete you. That said, let us take a look at our physical heart.
For your physical heart, be more careful because it is designed differently. Let us review our physical heart, what it is and how it works.
Your heart is muscle, a little larger than your fist, and it is located in the center of your chest tilting slightly to the left. It is that part of the body that would beat faster when you meet your one true love and when you see the contrabida of your life. A complicated maze of blood vessels and nerves and other vessels run around and crisscross through the muscle fibers to supply blood and energy. Meaning, we have to take care of these tiny vessels because they are the main factors for our heart’s well-being. If these are narrowed or blocked, then a heart attack occurs and this could be fatal.
What causes the narrowing or blockade of these blood vessels? By the way, if there is narrowing, it is not only the blood vessels of the heart that are narrowed but the other blood vessels in the body as well. If blockade or obstruction occurs in the brain, then we call the condition as “stroke”. So what causes narrowing? Blood vessels narrow when fat and sugar and other excess chemicals stick to the walls of the blood vessels. These substances don’t just stick- they have more chances of sticking to your blood vessels if the blood flow is slow. What causes slow blood flow? One, if you are not physically active. Of course, blood flows faster when you are walking than when you are riding a car. Two, if your blood is sticky or “malapot”, then flow would be slow. Easy to imagine, isn’t it? Just liken your blood to soy sauce or ketchup. If your blood is like soy sauce, then it will flow very easily. If your blood is like ketchup, then it will have difficulty in flowing, especially in the tiny arteries and veins like in your heart, brain, eyes, kidneys and other vital organs.
How is the heart formed? The heart and all the other parts of our body are formed and developed during the period of pregnancy. They start as simple structures and later developing into awesome organ systems as the pregnancy progresses. The implication of this is that our life in the womb is very critical because organs and body parts are developing very fast and thus are very sensitive to imbalances and excesses in the mother’s diet and lifestyle. A wide variety of congenital (inborn) defects or weakness are due to improper diet and lifestyle of the mother, especially during the first three months of pregnancy.
How is the heart related to blood pressure? Blood pressure is the pressure exerted by the circulating blood upon the walls of the blood vessels. This pressure is the force of contraction of your heart (systolic pressure) and the pressure in the blood vessel as the blood fills your heart (diastolic pressure). The force of contraction of your heart will depend on the viscosity or stickiness or oiliness of your blood and the resistance from your blood vessels. (That’s a law of nature.) So your blood pressure will rise if your blood is sticky and/or your blood vessels are narrowed. Conversely, your blood pressure will return to normal when your blood is not sticky and your blood vessels are supple and not clogged. However, if your heart is weak and cannot increase pressure, then it will just pump faster. So your blood pressure maybe normal but your heart rate is faster than 80 beats per minute.
The higher limit of a normal blood pressure used to be 140/90 but is now 120/80. (Western medical science is relatively new so it is still learning and changing standards.) Above that is a warning. It is advised that you have your blood pressure checked even early in life as youth is not a guarantee to normal blood pressure if your diet is unhealthy. I notice that strong people, even men, who lead physically active lives, like the fulltime farmers of Sadanga, and have macrobiotic diet have blood pressure readings of 100/70 or thereabouts.
Because the heart is muscle, it will get bigger if it works double time for many years. But unlike Mr. Philippines, where bigger biceps are desirable, an enlarged heart is a sick heart . In time, if the conditions causing the high blood pressure or abnormally fast heart rate are not corrected, then the heart will enlarge and the heart valves may fail. Mapapagod din ang muscle. The doctor will diagnose this condition as “heart failure”. Like a broken heart which you can mend, a heart that has “failed” or that had an “attack” can be healed but will take a lot of time and discipline in food choices and activities- avoid or minimize foods that make the blood sticky (sugar, milk, eggs, all kinds of animal meat, vetsin and other additives, refined flour products), no smoking, controlled alcohol intake and manage your relationships so no stress.
Let us not wait, however, for our hearts to complain. Just like we can avoid heartbreaks, we can also prevent heart attacks and heart failures. Let us take good care our hearts and they will happily take good care of us, 24/7.***
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23
