Stress and Your Heart Health
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It's 5 a.m. and the alarm clock jars you back into the land of the living after what surely must have been only 15 minutes of sleep, tops. It was actually four and a half hours but who’s keeping score?
An icy shower follows as you try to force your body awake and to respond to your commands, because your limbs are weary beyond reason and you have that hit-by-a-truck feeling.
The next hour is a blur as you dress children, fix breakfast, wash dishes, pack lunches, throw last night’s laundry into the dryer and start another load, take a deep breath, sign permission slips, referee fights, wake your husband with a cup of coffee and a smile -- well, maybe a grimace -- as you head out the door to finally “start” the day.
It’s your week for the carpool -- lucky you -- so you pick up and drop off 27 children – okay, so maybe that’s an exaggeration but to your pounding head it sounded like 27 children -- at various schools.
Your daughter forgot her backpack and came running back to the car to get it. Being the wicked mother that you are, you waited for her and held up the line, much to the displeasure of the school crossing guard police who share their opinion with you.
You drop off your husband’s suits at the dry cleaners, and after a 45-minute commute in the traffic jam from hell, you finally arrive at work. Your boss came in early and is in a bad mood and there’s already a pile of work -- all high priority -- waiting in your inbox.
Your headache is now rivaling a migraine of massive proportions but because you don’t have time to indulge yourself with a minor thing like pain -- severe enough to make you want to cut own your head off -- to feel better, you grab a cup of coffee, an emergency soda and a couple of donuts, well -- make that three donuts, for breakfast – after all, you’re going to need the caffeine and sugar boost just to make it through the morning.
You sigh, rub your temples, and pop a double dose of aspirin as the computer screen comes to life. You’ve been up for four hours, you’re exhausted -- and the “work” day is just beginning. You are stressed!
We value and respect the experiences of all of our HERWriters, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.
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