Stress and HeartDisease

if you feel stressin your life is spinning out of control,then you may be hurting your heart. Ifyou don't want to break your own heart,you need to learn to take charge of your

life where you canand recognize there are many things beyond your control.

So says Dr. RobertS.Eliot. He's a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska.Eliotsays there are people in this world whom he calls"hot reactors".Forthese

people,being tensemay cause tremendous and rapid increases in their blood pressure.

Eliot saysresearchers have found that stressed people have higher cholesterollevels,among other things."We've done years of work in showing that excessalarm or stress

chemicals canliterally burst heart muscle fibers.When that happens it happens veryquickly,within five minutes.It creates many short circuits,and that causescrazy heart

rhythms.The heartbeats like a bag of worms instead of a pump.And when that happens,we can'tlive."

Eliot,64,suffered aheart attack at age 44.He attributes some of the cause to stress.For years hewas a"hot reactor".On the exterior,he was cool,calm and collected,buton the

interior,stress waskilling him.He's now doing very well.

The main predictorsof destructive levels of stress are the FUD factors一fear,uncertainty and doubt一together with perceived lack of control,he says.

For many people,theroot of their stress is anger,and the trick is to find out where the anger iscoming from."Does the anger come from a feeling that everything must be

perfect?"Eliotasks.

One step to calmingdown is recognizing you have this tendency.Learn to be less hostile by changingsome of your attitudes and negative thinking.

Eliot recommendstaking charge of your life."If there is one word that should besubstituted for stress,it's control.Instead of the FUD factors,what you want isthe NICE

factors一new,interest-ing,challengingexperiences."He suggests that people write down the six things in theirlives that they feel are the most important things they'd like to

achieve.Ben Franklin did it at age32."He wrote down things like being a better father,being a betterhusband,being financially independent, being stimulated intellectually

and remainingeven-tempered一he wasn'tgood at that."

From Eliot'sviewpoint,the other key to controlling stress is to"realize that there areother troublesome parts of your life over which you can have little or nocontrol一like the

economy andpoliticians.

What does theterm"hot reactor" refer to?

A.People who areeasy to get annoyed.

B.People oftenchange their moods.

C.People who oftenquarrel with others.

D.People who arecool on the exterior but stressed on the interior.