Keeping your heart healthy in later life
Is it hot flashes? heart palpitations? or a panic attack?
At first, the symptoms can be quite confusing. When I started going through menopause. I had high levels of stress in my life and very little time for self care. I understood why women generally had babies younger in life, so we were not going through menopause during the teen years. After thought.
I lived rurally and had 2 boys playing soccer which required driving 30 min to town 5 days a week. We sometimes left the house at 7:30 AM and return at 9:00 PM. I was the only adult in our household. I was in a long distance relationship that was unstable and causing regular heartbreak
I started to skip periods and experience hot flashes. Sometimes I would soak the bed at night with sweat and wake up with a migrane headache. I also was starting to have scary heart rate changes and severe dizziness with shortness of breath upon exertion. Sometimes I would have to lie down wherever I was and breathe until my heart rate would return to normal. At times I was not sure if was having a hot flash or a palpitation? Was I panicking or just sweating due to a hot flash? Was it my heart or my Hormones or my Emotions? Intuitively, I felt these symptoms were all related. For months my stress levels very high and my symptoms got worse.
When I finally went to have my heart checked, I was diagnosed with a heart tumor. (which was a misdiagnosis) A few days later my partner of 4 years broke up with me. The scary diagnosis and sudden life alone without a partner was too much for my heart.
I ended up with Heart failure, a cardioversion that went wrong, a near death experience and diagnosis of HCM- Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, a”Genetic” Heart Disease. I spent 14 days in the hospital and a had Cardiac Ablation procedure. They sent my home with a bag full of prescription bottles and a pamphlet on Heart Failure.
Since then I have been studying heart issues and the relationship between emotions and cardiac ailments. I have learned that Estrogen protects the heart. Many women start to have heart issues as they go through menopause and a decrease of estrogen in their body. Discovering the relationship between menopause and hear tissues brought me to Christiane Northrup and learn her perspective on menopause.
Here is some exerpts of her Menopause and Beyond: Christiane Northrup: “The key to a sustainable healthy life style is learning caregiving where you include yourself in those who are receiving care. If you don’t include yourself, if you are stressed out and not receiving nourishment, this is what leads to burn-out. Self sacrifice is increased risk for heart attack and everything else.’Ovulation is the time when women give birth to something outside of themselves. The second half of the cycle is a time to give birth to something deep inside yourself. PMS is actually pre-menstrual truth telling. and if you take time to rest, and take time to do something that you love to do you will find your PMS symptoms will disappear. It has to be fueled from your soul. However you get about 400 chances to do that work from the age of 13 or so to 40- 45 or so, and if you don’t do it that will come up premenstrually. If you haven’t paid attention to PMS, guess what you have to suffer through? Perimenopause! The mother of all wake up calls.” Society is not very supportive of women giving birth to something deep within themselves. This is hard because you have been trained, all of you to do things for other people so they will love you. but all of that has to go away if you are going to stay healthy in the 2nd half of your life.”
Another inspiring writer and cardiologist is Suzanne Steinbaum. Here is an exerpt from her book “The Heart Book”
Living from the heart Living from the heart feels much different than living form the head. When you live from the heart, you feel at peace, at ease, and in control of yourself because of a deep inner knowing. You store everything that you love inside your heart, and you also store things you don’t love. You have a lot going on in there and that’s why nurturing your heart is so crucial. Your heart Is always trying to tell you something about your bigger picture. It will lead you to the right decisions in your life. Your heart is wise. Are you listening?
Women are naturally heart centered beings, with intuition and sensitive systems that speak to them if only they would listen.How hard do you have to work to climb a flight of stairs?How do you sleep?How do you like your job?How content are you in relationships?What do you feed yourself?How much do you move your body?How much support do you have? What are your passions? How much time do you spend pursuing those passions?
I personally relate very much to what these 2 women are teaching about heart health and staying healthy through menopause. I wonder how it is for other women? Is there a correlation for you with menopause symptoms and heart symptoms? What is it like for men during this same time of life?
I am fascinated by how connected our bodies are to our emotions. The heart seems to really know our story, perhaps better than our mind.