By David Tuller
Teaching cardiac patients how to manage stress may be as effective as aerobic exercise in decreasing the long-term risk of further coronary illness, and it may also reduce medical costs.
The idea that lowering stress can improve outcomes for heart patients is not new. But the Duke study, which followed heart patients for five years, is believed to be the first to measure the benefits of stress management over a sustained period and to demonstrate its potential economic benefits.
Lots of physicians remain very skeptical about the value of psychological interventions in treating patients with medical disorders. The data suggest that these interventions do affect the process, and the benefits seemed to be maintained over time.
The study followed 94 men with previous heart problems and evidence of continuing insufficient flow of blood to the heart.
The subjects were divided into three groups. One group attended a four-month aerobic exercise program; a second participated in weekly stress management classes for the same period, and a control group received just the usual care for cardiac patients, including medications and regular visits to doctors. Aerobic exercise has long been considered a key to cardiac health.
The researchers followed up the patients each year for five years and recorded additional cardiac events, like heart attacks, angioplasty and bypass surgery. They calculated expenses from federal government averages for various procedures.
After five years, members of the stress management group had an average of 0.8 additional cardiac events each, compared with 1.3 for the group that received only the usual care.
When medical costs over five years were tallied, the stress management group averaged expenses of $9,251 each compared with $14,997 for the members of the control group.
Interestingly, the exercise group also experienced more cardiac events and higher average costs per member than the stress management group. But when results were adjusted for age and cardiac history, the differences were not statistically significant.
The stress management program emphasized the physiological effect of stress on cardiovascular disease and gave training in muscle relaxation. It also taught participants to recognize how they created stress in their lives through cognitive distortions, like mistakenly blaming themselves for bad luck.
The American Journal of Cardiology January 2002
New York Times January 22, 2002
It has been previously shown that people with heart disease can lower their risk of subsequent cardiac events by over 70% if they learn how to manage stress.
I am clinically convinced that the vast majority of heart disease and cancer is foundationally related to unresolved emotional conflict. The study described above clearly seems to support this notion.
Suppressed emotions, such as anger, fear, and sadness, that are not fully transformed will severely limit one's ability to cope with the normal stresses of life. It is not so much the stress that kills us, but our impaired ability to cope with it. Emotional and spiritual transformation are probably the keys to resolving this.
Fortunately the technology now exists to rapidly and effectively transform these emotions. We do it every day in our office with EFT and other bioenergetic tools.
If heart disease is a concern for you or your loved one you should consider purchasing the ten hours of videos of a workshop that I recently did on EFT as that will provide you with a basic foundation in EFT. The videos are risk free. They have a full one year guarantee refund. If you are not absolutely satisfied that the techniques you learn from viewing the tape are not worth it you can return the videos for a full refund.
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