World Heart Day (Sept 29)

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Did you know your heart is the size of your fist and started beating about three weeks after you were conceived? And that by the time you are 70yrs old it will have beaten around two and half billion times!

Despite the wondrous organ it is; the heart can become vulnerable to cardiovascular disease (CVD) through lifestyle choices like smoking, unhealthy diet and stress, leading to key risk factors like high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity.

Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) is a broad term that covers a variety of conditions that affect the heart’s structure and function. CVD accounts for one in four deaths in Australia and is the leading cause of death and disability globally.

Here’s what you can do:

Prevention is better than a cure and there are many ways you can prevent stroke through healthy lifestyle choices (see below) and having routine health checks with your GP.

  • stay active

  • eat well

  • quit smoking

  • drinking alcohol in moderation only

  • making time to see your GP to get your blood pressure, heart, glucose and cholesterol levels checked

Osteopathy:

The cardiovascular system is controlled by not only a unique intrinsic system, but is also heavily influenced by the autonomic (involuntary) nervous system (ANS).

The ANS has two divisions: the sympathetic nervous system (sympathetics) and the parasympathetic nervous system (parasypathetics). The sympathetics prepare the body for energy expenditure, emergency or stressful situations, i.e. fight or flight. The parasympathetics counteract the sympathetics after a stressful event and restores the body ‘rest and digest.’

The sympathetics cause increases in the heart rate and contractility, as well as blood pressure and respiration rate. We modern folk can get into trouble through our fast living tempo’s, leading to chronic stimulation of our sympathetics. This is often compounded by a lack of good rest, and our parasympathetics don’t get to effect balance on overall ANS tone. Our baseline for function can therefore become shifted and we learn to function in ‘sympathetic dominance’, which can eventually lead to allostatic overload and illness.

Osteopathy has its most far reaching affects on the cardiovascular system through the ANS. For assessment of ANS function for the cardiovascular system, the areas of the neck and upper back are important.

Gentle Osteopathic techniques that encourage rest for the ANS, help it reset its homeostatic balance or resting tone, bringing changes to the cardiovascular system and beyond.

Stats sourced from Heart Foundation.