Page 53 - Summer 2017 Journal

connects stress or adrenaline in any way with increased plaque in the major coronary arteries. Yet every study shows that one of the main risk factors for people getting heart disease is severe and chronic emotional, physical or psychologi- cal stress. This does not make any sense from the point of view of plaque formation, but again, it makes perfect sense from the perspective of the small blood vessels.
Remember that we have two nervous systems. One is the
central nervous system
and the other is the
unconscious or auto-
nomic nervous sys-
tem. The autonomic
nervous system in turn
is divided into two
branches, the sympa-
thetic and parasym-
pathetic. The sympa-
thetic (“fight or flight”)
branch is centered,
chemically speaking,
in the adrenal medulla,
which is in the center
of the adrenal gland.
It has cells that make
adrenaline and other
neurotransmitters. Be-
ing in a “flight” situ-
ation or experiencing
physical, emotional or
psychological stress
activates your sym-
pathetic nervous system and increases your production of adrenaline. This has a number of biochemical effects, including constricting the small blood vessels and increasing the breakdown of glucose through a process called glycolysis. These effects provide short-term energy that presumably allow you to run away from the bear. The parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) part of the autonomic nervous system is centered in the adrenal cortex, which is the outer region of the adrenal gland. It makes cortisone one of the central neurotransmitters that mediate the function of that part of the nervous system.
Let me point out here that a healthy heart is like the conductor of a band or orchestra.
SUMMER 2017
Imagine you have a drummer in the band. You can’t replace the drummer with a metronome because the music would sound mechanical, but if you have a drummer who can’t keep the beat, that messes everyone up, too. There is flex- ibility within the beat, and it has to do with the drummer listening and varying the beat almost imperceptibly to keep everyone together. What you need is a strong beat-to-beat variability. The same is true of the heart, and that is called
heart rate variabil- ity, which we can measure. The heart should not be either a metronome or a drummer who can’t keep a rhythm.
In a sense, this beat-to-beat variability repre- sents the integrity or strength of the parasympathetic nervous system. Whenever you see the heart rate vari- ability decrease ei- ther in the direction of becoming more mechanical like a metronome or be- coming completely chaotic, it means that the other organs in the body don’t
have a conductor anymore and they go their own way, which is the source of disease. We now know that over 95 percent of people who have a heart attack have decreased heart rate variability in one or the other direction. Some are metro- nomes, and some have no rhythm whatsoever. Decreased heart rate variability is actually the central event in the evolution of a heart attack and is usually happening for a long time before the patient has any symptoms. High blood pres- sure, diabetes, chronic stress, nicotine use and everything else linked to heart attacks have all been shown to decrease heart rate variability and parasympathetic tone.
The parasympathetic nervous system has
A healthy heart is
like the conductor of a band or orchestra.
Wise Traditions
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