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RECOVERY FROM HEART DISEASE: KEEPING A BALANCE
We highlighted the importance of seeking a new balance in your life. This includes your physical health, your emotional well-being and your social support system. Life is an interacting dynamic, and you need to ensure that you don’t go off balance, and, if you do, that you don’t remain there. You will want to ensure that your marriage and your family are not in states of persistent unhappiness or conflict, and you are not emotionally distanced from your loved ones. You will want to avoid job strain, heavy financial pressure and estrangement from your family, friends and activities.
How do you do this? On the positive side, your happiness will be linked to a sense of harmony and balance, within yourself and in relation to others. On the cardiac side, by now you “know” what you have to do. Risk-factor modification is an ongoing lifestyle issue and will be much easier to maintain if your emotional life is in balance.
Ten steps to equanimity
One dictionary definition of “equanimity” is “evenness of mind or temper; composure.” This represents an attitude of balance between reacting to, or denial of, what has happened up to now, and the unrealistic expectation that heart disease will have no impact on your future well-being or future prospects. Equanimity emphasizes a balance that includes attention paid to your physical, social, emotional and spiritual self. Much as exercise programs continue indefinitely, this process of increasing self-awareness should continue indefinitely. Better understanding of how and why you react to your illness, your loved ones and the stresses and strains in your life will help you be better able to deal with these and continue with the gains that you have made during your rehabilitation.
Listen to your body. If during an activity you feel physically distressed, it is probably unwise for you to be doing it. This does not mean that a small amount of fatigue, or even shortness of breath, is dangerous and can’t, in fact, be energizing. Learn to take the “temperature” of your physical sensations; working somewhat harder at physical activity and being slightly tired is not dangerous and can be a sign that you are getting physical training. Learn also to distinguish true physical hunger from feeling like eating something that you may not need nutritionally. Try to distinguish “I want” from “I need,” and “I can’t” from “I won’t.”
Listen to your loved ones. Most of us are fortunate to have significant others, family members or trusted friends who have our welfare at heart and are able to be more objective about our condition than we ourselves can be. Listening carefully to their advice, even if we don’t always heed it precisely, can help us feel that we are part of a team rather than “going it alone.”
Seek professional advice. This includes from your doctors, staff at a cardiac rehabilitation clinic, a nutritionist, physiotherapist, spiritual adviser, and anyone you may have access to who can help you with specific aspects of your rehabilitation. Remember, they have your best interests in mind.
Be contemplative. Think carefully about the journey you are on, where you have come from and where you are heading, and what you need to do to stay on the right road. This includes appropriate use of hesitation. If you are about to turn the TV on, thinking, “Oh, I’m too tired to take a walk tonight,” consider whether this is what you really would like to do. Which activity will make you feel better about yourself, and ultimately give you more life satisfaction? Before you reach for that second piece of chocolate cake, hesitate; think of the positive benefits of taking control over your eating habits, which will make it easier for you to hesitate the next time.
Understand and follow your medical regimen. Fortunately, there are many effective and life-prolonging medications available to heart patients today. You may need to take many of these. Although you may think that they are a nuisance to take, have annoying side effects and represent a financial commitment, they also have undoubted long-term benefits. Understanding the nature of and the purpose for each of your medications will make it much easier for you to follow the regimen you are prescribed.
Be patient. Successful rehabilitation and recovery is a slow and ongoing process, and you should not expect to be able to change all of your habits overnight.
Be optimistic. This may not be an easy frame of mind to adopt, especially when you have been ill. Remember that most patients can achieve remarkable gains in their well-being and capacity for activity if they take it slowly, expect only small changes from day to day, and have faith in the ability of their bodies to improve. Remember, this improvement can take place even if the heart muscle does not itself get stronger, and despite the presence of fairly serious heart disease.
Cardio & Blood
Men’s HealthYou’re stronger than you think. Most of us have reserves of untapped energy that we never use, and our bodies are more resilient than we imagine. For example, the ejection fraction is the percentage of blood in the heart that is pumped with each beat. Normally this is over 50 percent, or even over 60 percent. Many patients with ejection fractions of 20 or 30 percent, formerly thought to be incapable of any level of exertion, can over time learn to perform almost all the activities of daily life, including the moderately strenuous ones. Over time, patients can completely change their eating habits, and even their outlook on life. Although difficult, change is possible.
The journey is never over. Remember, you are never truly “cured” of heart disease, but you can learn to live in stable equilibrium with your heart, and if you treat it with respect, it will be less likely to treat you rudely in the future.
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