Читать книгу Look 15 Years Younger: The 15-Minute-a-Day Yoga Plan - Barbara Currie - Страница 20

We would learn to care for our heart and blood vessels. Under stress, the body tries to make an enormous amount of energy available to enable us to flee or fight. This accelerates the heart rate and also squeezes the arteries and veins to try to raise the rate at which the blood flows through, and as a result the blood pressure is raised. The clotting mechanism of the blood is also raised, as the body sensibly thinks that if one has to flee or fight, an injury could be a likely outcome.

The net result of this is that the heart pumps thickened blood faster through narrow tubes. Because of this pressure, when the body is under long-term stress the arterial walls frequently become damaged. As the body tries its hardest to repair itself no matter how badly we treat it, it sends blood platelets and fatty acids to seal the damage; this, however, results in narrowing the arteries further. Continued stress increases the clotting mechanism, and if a clot breaks loose it can easily block a narrowed blood vessel. This, of course, can be fatal. So if we learn to stretch away our tensions daily, eat a healthy diet and relax and allow our arteries and blood-clotting mechanism to calm down, the fight-or-flight reaction subsides, the blood-clotting mechanism is lowered, the arteries relax and blood pressure returns to normal. This would result in excellent care of our heart and circulatory system.