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Hello and thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Art of Healing podcast. This is Charlize and, as always, thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. February is heart health in the United States, so, for a lot of reasons, we're talking about heart health heart health as far as preventing heart attack. Heart health as far as preventing stroke. Heart health as far as Valentine's Day and getting booed up or staying with your boo, depending on where you are. I want to discuss a holistic approach to heart health and my approach to caring for our hearts and staying heart healthy, not just from a medication approach. So let's get started. When we're taking a holistic approach to health, what we're saying is that we want to address the body, the mind and the spirit as a whole. So we want to look at more than just the diagnosis, and treatment or management is going to be more than just medications. So when we're taking a holistic approach to heart health, we're going to try to look at all of that, and that's what happens in my practice is we try to look at every aspect of your life, not just the disease or diagnosis, not just the labs. We actually want to know as many pieces of information as we can, because oftentimes in that information that's what we're missing. That's where things went wrong. So let's dive into a holistic approach to heart health. When we're thinking about heart health, one of the questions that we might want to ask is how did your heart start off? What kind of heart were you born with, and were you in fact born with a normal heart? I'm referring to congenital heart disease, which isn't the most uncommon thing. Many people are born with defects in their hearts and aren't aware of it until they're an adult because for many reasons, their body may have learned to compensate or whatever. The defect wasn't as impactful when their bodies were smaller, but as adults it is starting to have a major impact. Congenital heart disease, or CHD is often called, can be a defect inside the top of the heart, called a patent frame in O Valley. Can be a defect in the bottom of the heart, which can be called a ventricle or ventricular septal defect. Can be a problem with how the valves inside the heart form. So when we have those kind of conditions, you may have heard a term called a hole in the heart. So I start to wonder if I know of a patient's history back far enough as far as their mother's health history or if they have a family history of congenital heart disease, and then also if we know that their mother may have had health issues during the pregnancy, particularly being diabetic or having a heart disease herself or being exposed to a high amount of stress. Because it turns out that if women experience stress or trauma during a pregnancy it could have an effect on how the baby's heart forms and it could increase the chances that the baby's heart forms were the defect. That could be dangerous. So that's the first question I try to ask is did the heart form normally?
Speaker 1:
Next is assessing the health of your heart, which in modern times you can do pretty easily at home, just with either your two fingers and your wrist or using a smart device. So assessing your heart rate can start with how much, how fast your heart is beating or just checking your pulse. So simplest way to check your pulse if you don't have a smart device, is the first or second and third finger of your non-dominant hand, because it's more sensitive to place that on the wrist and we usually describe that as like the base of the thumb, but it's sort of like on the side of your wrist where your thumb lies, placing the two fingers there lightly. If you put your fingers in and you don't feel a pulse, then try using lighter and lighter pressure. At that point you should feel a pulse. Then setting a timer and then counting your pulse. The most accurate is counting over about 30 seconds and then multiplying by two. Some people count for a full minute or just 15 seconds and multiply by four. Naturally, if you wear a smart device, the device you know a lot of the watches and monitoring devices can monitor your pulse for you. So you've got real time, daddy, you can always just check it and see what your pulse is doing right at that moment.
Speaker 1:
Although the smart devices make it really quick to check your pulse, I actually really like checking it manually, just checking it with your fingers. So some of the observations you can make and you can even do that right now is your listening is to go ahead and detect your pulse on your wrist and you can go ahead and do a count of what your pulse is. So since I'm on the podcast, I can run a timer for you. So when I start talking again you can actually count how many beats you got and that's your pulse. So we'll give it a few more seconds. Okay, and start counting your pulse right now and stop. So whatever number you counted out, you'll multiply that by two. So for me, my pulse during that pulse checking exercise was 78. So you can just make a note of your pulse.
Speaker 1:
One of my favorite exercises to do is to then repeat your pulse, but to do it while you're breathing, mindfully, so while taking big, strong inhales into your belly, into your chest, and then exhaling, so we can practice just a good cleansing breath together. So you inhale and fill up the belly, then the chest, and hold for a second and then let it out. You can exhale through your mouth or your nose, in your mouth, but maybe doing that two or three times, just big inhales and then exhales, and then we can play with checking our pulse again. But now let's do it by taking those deep, conscious cleansing breaths. So let's start counting now, okay. So whatever number you got, you can multiply that by two and that's your new resting pulse with deep breaths. So what did you notice? So for myself, I noticed that when I was talking and thinking and taking my pulse, my resting pulse was 78, maybe closer to 80. But when I slowed down and took deep breaths and attempt to relax my shoulders and my neck, my pulse rate fell down to 68.
Speaker 1:
So one of my favorite things to do with people is to measure that pulse and it's actually even an exercise. It's an Ayurvedic pulse check where you observe the quality of your pulse, if it feels strong and bounding or if it feels weak and thready. Just make observations as you check your pulse. This is a great way to get a good detection of what your heart's doing. So you can do things like throughout your day check your pulse manually and if it's bounding and fast, it kind of helps you to connect to how you're feeling. You might be feeling stressed. You don't realize it. Or if you check it in the afternoon, it's kind of slow and weak. They may tell you that, oh, I'm getting really tired and fatigued during the end of the day. So that pulse check one of my favorite holistic heart health activities.
Speaker 1:
Beyond the pulse, the other thing we can assess as far as knowing our heart health is blood pressure. So a lot of us have blood pressure cuffs at home or within reach. So feel free if you want to check your blood pressure now or later in the podcast or later on, in knowing what your blood pressure is. That's a big push that we talk about during heart health month, because in normal blood pressure, the top number, or systolic, is 120, the bottom number is 70. And for the most part, that's where most of us need to be. Sometimes it can run a little higher during times of stress You're driving in traffic and, of course, sometimes it might run lower. Normal physiology, for instance for women that are pregnant, will typically have a lower blood pressure, and that's actually okay. So, knowing what your blood pressure is, checking it, and then you might even want to try the same exercise when you check it at some random time, and then maybe later on, check your blood pressure after you've had maybe a five minute meditation and see what your blood pressure does.
Speaker 1:
If you have a history of high blood pressure, the things you could think about or you're trying to prevent high blood pressure is how is your metabolism doing? So, if you're having metabolic issues, such as your tending towards having elevated insulin or an increased risk of diabetes, is that affecting your blood pressure? And actually it is. You just wouldn't notice it right off the bat. And then, of course, understanding what your internal environment is and what's going on throughout your day.
Speaker 1:
Hypertension or high blood pressure is one of those diagnosis that a lot of people have that have really learned to power through life. So to get through their day and take care of their family and get their jobs done and just really survive during the day, they've had to ignore the signals that their body's sending them. One of the things that we'll hear about high blood pressure or hypertension is that it's a silent killer. Truth be known, it's really not silent. There actually are symptoms of hypertension. They're just subtle, but there could be symptoms such as blood pressure issues, vision changes, swelling in the legs or feet, dizzy spells, feeling thirsty a lot it could be. It could actually be symptoms of fatigue. So it's not actually a silent disease. It actually does have symptoms, it's just that they're subtle.
Speaker 1:
Beyond the pulse and the blood pressure, the other numbers that it's good to know are your cholesterol. So having high cholesterol not all of the cholesterol numbers, but we know having a high VLDL, potentially a high LDL those are the cholesterol particles that are sticky and they do damage because they stick to arteries and they can cause inflammation and the lining of that artery and when that inflammation sets in it can cause the immune system to kick in to try to heal that artery of the damage that's occurring. And in the process of inflammation healing, inflammation healing, what's called a plaque develops and the plaque can fill up with cholesterol, fill up with debris from the immune system working and then if it completely blocks the artery, it depends on where that artery is the symptoms that can occur. So a blocked artery in the coronary arteries causes a myocardial infarction or heart attack. A blocked artery in the arteries going to the legs causes peripheral arterial disease that we call clotication, so pain in the limber leg when you're walking you can have that form in the arteries that go to the gut and you can actually get what's called angina of the gut, bowel ischemia, so that when you're eating and the gut needs more blood flow and it can't get it because the arteries are not getting enough blood flow. So there's abdominal pain with meals and eating.
Speaker 1:
So checking your cholesterol, which can be done, you know, simply with your doctor's office, there's actually a few labs that you can use where you can order your own cholesterol. That's actually something you should know and want to know and I'll put a link in the show notes for some resources where you can check your cholesterol on your own and knowing where your HDL is. So that's a cholesterol that you want to be elevated. If it's low, you need to be thinking about your nutrition. Do you have an adequate amount of healthy fats in your diet? Do you have an adequate amount of fiber in your diet? Are you having too much sugar in your diet? Because if you have too much sugar, that actually can have an adverse effect on your HDL, then your LDL that's the small sticky cholesterol that you don't want to be too high. And same things If it's high, checking with your physician or your provider. As far as do you need to be on medication, especially have a family risk of heart disease, if you would benefit from medical treatment or if lifestyle would be enough, which is the same increasing fiber, reducing sugars that are bad for you the ones that taste the best but are addictive they make your cholesterol high and making sure you actually get enough good fats in your diet. And another test called a VLDL, which is the very sticky particles of cholesterol that do damage so cholesterol.
Speaker 1:
Another approach. And then it points you to, in addition to what we just practice, as far as understanding how your body is spending distress? Is your blood pressure running higher more times than not because your stress levels are higher? More times than not is your nutrition doing what you needed to do in your body? So, are you getting the right amounts of the stuff that we need, and are you getting too much of the stuff that we don't want? Also, with your heart health, it's important to think about your mind health. So knowing the content of your thoughts and your mood is extremely important in knowing your heart health.
Speaker 1:
And one of the most overlooked places in medicine as far as preventing heart disease. Take your depression hold hands with heart attack. So much so that in most hospitals, if they don't do this, they're looking at doing it, making sure that every patient that's had a heart attack has been screened and or treated for depression. And most hospitals have some kind of system or backup in which a patient that has been admitted for a heart attack is evaluated to make sure that they don't have depression. And the numbers are pretty high. I think it's up to 30 or 40% of people that have been treated for a heart attack have clinical depression, either diagnosed or not. After a heart attack. That's seen when the heart, the arteries get blocked that supply the heart with blood, the rates of developing clinical major depression are pretty high. I think the numbers that we quote around 50%. But to be honest, what I've seen in my own practice is that every patient that has survived a heart attack has an element of depression. Sometimes it's brief, sometimes it's lasting just a few weeks, a few months, a lot of times as they reflect on what's happened, because in that period of time as a recovering from a heart attack, they have more time to themselves that the depression wasn't new and didn't start with just the heart attack, that it was present before. Just things going on in their life didn't allow them to have access or feel what was going on.
Speaker 1:
So assessing your mood and knowing if you are at risk of depression or if you're feeling depressed, you can do it simply. It could simply be done by answering two questions. So the first question you can ask is in the past two weeks, have I had little interest or pleasure in doing things? And you score zero if that's not at all, one if it's several days you felt that way, two if it's more than half the days, and three if it's nearly every day. So the question was in the past two weeks have I had little interest or pleasure in doing things. Zero, one, two, three, three with every day I felt that way. Zero, not at all. The second question is in the past two weeks have you felt down, depressed or hopeless? So you score zero if you haven't felt that way at all. You score one if you felt that way several days, two if you felt that way more than half the days, and three if you felt that way nearly every day. And what we do with that score is if you scored positive in any way, you could be at risk of depression or you may have depression, and it is probably time to discuss this test further with a physician and do more questioning and see if you're depression, if you have depression, if it needs to be treated, if this is something where you could just do therapy and respond well, or if you would need more, potentially even interventions, supplements or medications.
Speaker 1:
But understanding your depression risk is huge as far as your heart disease, because untreated depression, you could almost say, increases your risk of a heart attack. One final piece of information that I look at when I am assessing someone's heart health, not so much right now, not so much even like last month or last year, but what happened to them in their childhood. So it turns out that being a survivor of adverse childhood experiences, or what's called ACE, can increase your risk of many diseases, but particularly heart disease, such as heart attack and stroke, significantly. Adverse childhood experiences are experiences during childhood that go beyond the norm. So those could be experiences such as witnessing violence, being a victim of violence. Those could be living through a war or terrorism, being a survivor of sexual trauma, emotional trauma or physical abuse. Adverse childhood experiences could also be having a family member suffering through an addiction or having a close family member being incarcerated. So I'll put in the link a place where you can actually score yourself for adverse childhood experiences and so you can do yours. This is actually several questions, so I don't want to go through all those questions while we're together on the podcast, but if you want, you can go to the link, click the link and then do the test for yourself.
Speaker 1:
Being a survivor of adverse childhood experiences has been shown in studies to increase the risk of ischemic heart disease, increase the risk of other disorders, such as auto immune disease, so it definitely has a strong impact on the health and what can be done about this is healing the trauma and creating a team that can help you assess, learn to take some steps towards healing, coming up with a general approach to heal the wounds of the past. But it is important as far as keeping a healthy heart, because we know that adverse childhood experiences can increase risk of heart attack, increase the risk of high blood pressure. There even some studies that survivors of adverse childhood experiences don't respond as well to medications and this is likely related to unmitigated or unknown depression that they're learning to live with and haven't learned to heal yet. It's important to point this out because when their childhood experiences, it becomes your norm and it's not until light is shined on it do you start to understand that that event, that trauma you survived, wasn't normal and actually was very scary or dangerous and could have an adverse impact on you. And, of course, with this holistic approach, you look at the past, look at the present, you try to mitigate the risk of the future. With holistic health, you're trying to dig deep.
Speaker 1:
So I'm going to plug a very special program on my YouTube channel where myself and Kathy Harmon-Luber, a very experienced sound healer and Reiki master, have created a program for opening the heart chakra. So if you're approaching your heart health from a holistic way and you're trying to work with your team holistically, I would strongly recommend that you watch our YouTube videos. There are four of them now and what we do is guide you into the inner workings of the heart chakra. We help you experience your heart chakra and then we conclude the program with a powerful healing session which you get a combination of healing sound and music created by Kathy. That's beyond description. It's just simply beautiful, and I channel Reiki and I'm noticing there are several downloads and we're getting good comments about that healing session which we worked together and we designed it to help all of us engage in our heart chakra.
Speaker 1:
So throughout this podcast I hope we've made that connection that, although the physical part in the checking the pulse and the blood pressure are important, getting into your inner workings, your mind, what you've lived through, especially if you're living with heart disease, can be the first steps to healing what's going on with you. So in your show notes I will put links to labs you can consider using, if you're thinking about checking your cholesterol, the tests that you can do on yourself to assess if maybe you have survived adverse childhood experiences and didn't realize it, and then links to our program, if you would like to start that and honor our heart health month. Thank you so much for joining me for this podcast. As always, I really appreciate you being a listener and if you feel this episode is helpful, please share it with your family and friends. I've got a social page that you can easily just send the link by text to someone if you think they should have a listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks.
