Dr. Jeff is kicking off February to shed some light on 'Heart Disease Awareness' month and he wants to make sure you're paying attention to the key things that could be contributing to poor heart health.
"At the end of this video, share this with somebody who might be able to benefit from this information and also comment. I want to know what's going on with you and how you're able to relate to this video.
Doctors will tell you that you got to find out, 'What's your number?', you know and 'What's your cholesterol number?'. People know that when you get blood work they look at triglycerides and blood pressure is another number they always want to make sure that you're knowing.
I'm not sure if those are the most important numbers out there. A lot of times when you do have that high cholesterol, high triglycerides, they'll put you on statins. If you google statins, in the last six months there has been research coming out saying that over the last decade that they've been prescribing the statins, that they're really not effective. They haven't really been doing too much for the health of us.
That's something you probably want to bring up to somebody if you've ever been prescribed statins or talk to your doctor about that and say this is what's going on and something you need to know about."
The Stress Response
"But the reason we should be paying attention and knowing about is why these numbers are high. Why is the number of people with heart disease up there? Why is our cholesterol high? Why are triglycerides high in our body? Why is our blood pressure high?
The reason why is because these are natural defenses for us. Years ago and back in the day we would go out hunting and if we came across an animal we would go into fight or flight. We've got two options. We can choose to fight that or we start to run away.
Once you get away from that stress, everything will start to calm down. But in doing that your body goes through different changes physiologically. Your heart rate is going to go up, your blood pressure is going to go up as you get ready to do this 'fight or flight' activity, and there's going to be more cholesterol put into the blood which is normal because that's a fuel our bodies use.
Sugar gets put in there, our immune system gets shut down, our digestive system gets shut down but everything gets elevated. But once you get away from that stress, our parasympathetic side of our nervous system will kick in and start to calm us down. Everything will calm down and start to get back into a normal state.
But when our cholesterol and our blood pressure are still elevated on a daily basis, that's what's really showing is that we're stuck in stress.
Stress & The Nervous System
You have to remember that what controls all this is our nervous system. So when our nervous system is still receiving stress, it could be physical stress, mental stress, it could be the toxins from the air and what we're putting into our bodies. So our bodies are perceiving these stressors to always be there and be constant on us.
It's a fact that we're under more stress than our grandparents were ever. We have more stress in one day than they had in a year. Those are some of the stats that are out there which is absolutely amazing because we are stuck in that state of sympathetic overdrive or in other words stuck in stress."
How We Test For Stress
"People always ask me when they come in because they love the technology that we use, because we use a three test score to figure out where that stress is happening within our nervous system and to see if you are stuck in stress.
We use an HRV or Heart Rate Variability, an EMG which tests how our muscles are doing, and we also test thermal to see if our body is in sympathetic or parasympathetic and show you how it is. We have really smart people who come up with an algorithm and they come up with your Core Score.
As you can see this number is 72 and everything is based out of 100. We have our different scores for our HRV, EMG, and also for our thermal. Obviously, we want to be closer to 100 the better off we are. This is a great tool and allows us to see when and where our patients are stuck in stress and see what's going on with them too."
Why Do I Have Stress?
"You have to remember too when we look at our blood tests and some other numbers, cause we're going to look at white blood cells as a brilliant example to show exactly what's going on and how this works. So our white blood count, wbc, in healthy people should normally be at a good level. We do have some diseases like leukemia that forces them to be elevated but we're not talking about that, we're talking about a normal healthy person.
If you take their blood work while they're sick, their white blood count is going to be high because there's a virus or bacteria that the body is fighting because it's under stress. Once that virus or bacteria gets taken away or gets destroyed, what happens to our white blood count? It starts going back down to a normal level. That's what should be happening.
It happens with the white blood count when we get away from that stress but why is our cholesterol staying high? Why are our triglycerides staying high? Why is our blood pressure staying high? It's because we're under a mountain of stress. We're stuck in stress.
That's what we want to do is find out exactly where you're stuck in stress and why you're stuck in stress and what you're able to do about that too. We love that Core Score and love to be able to show the people in our community where they're going and what they need to do about it."
If you have any questions please reach out to our team at Cedar Grove Family Chiropractic today! 973-239-3222
