How safe are you from a heart attack?

Early this week through the grapevine I learned that my college classmate Lucerne died. He had a heart attack while jogging, something that happens far too often for a man in his 50s. Several hours later he died in the hospital.

So many successful men like him get caught up in their pursuit of their interest and career that they don’t take good care of themselves. Stress has a way of creeping up when you’re going about your life, especially if you’re successful.

Everyone’s shocked. Not only because we lost him, but also because we are of the same age and mostly we’ve got similar life stories. We all came to US for graduate school, a year or so after we graduated from college.

Chinese Medicine Perspective

I can’t help but wonder what caused his death. His mind was so active, as to writing essays on mathematical equations and entering stock trading competitions one after another, and of course on social issues.

Chinese Medicine doesn’t differentiate the mind from the heart. The western brain may house the mind, yet it’s the energy of the heart that powers the mind. And the energy resides in the heart is the spirit, the supreme controller of the human being.

A super active mind therefore places a heavy workload on the heart.

From a Chinese Medicine perspective, heart problems can also be caused by the weaknesses in other meridians and organs: lungs, stomach, spleen, kidneys, pericardium, liver and gallbladder.

Stress’s Role

In addition, stress plays such an important role in how efficient the human machine runs. Even when you don’t feel stressed, the stress of the last two years, especially the stress of the lock-down, of whom to trust, whom to see face to face, wears your organs down.

By the time you feel stressed, the damage to your body has probably been done.

It’s like the recommendation of drinking 8 glasses water a day. Some say don’t wait until you’re thirty. By then your cells are dehydrated already.

A New Model

The more I thought about the common conception that men like Lucerne are so caught up in their pursuit for success and money that they forget to take care of themselves, the more I realized that’s not the whole picture.

The Western model of taking care of our well-being hasn’t evolved much in the past 50 years even though our life style has changed drastically. The demands that we put on our bodies are much higher, especially if you’re successful.

We’re driving our body like a Formula One (race) car but we take care of it like a retiree’s car that only goes to the grocery store and back.

“Are you taking care of yourself” is no longer the right question. It is instead:

“Are you taking sufficient care of yourself in proportion to the demands that you make of your particular body that has gone through your unique life experiences and carries your specific family genes?”

— or, to put simply,—-

“Are you taking sufficient care of yourself that’s appropriate for you?”

I don’t have an answer to what caused Lucerne’s death even though I have inklings on what might have contributed to it. We’ll never know for sure.

I do know that managing the stress of everyday living can make a difference. Maybe that’s the difference in being alive and being dead.

What you can do

For that, there are two videos on my YouTube channel to support you:

1. 7-min Daily Stress Routine: It’s designed to be a Daily Habit for you to use to calm stress and anxiety effectively and quickly. It’s based on the principles of Chinese Medicine and Qi Gong practice.
   
2. 3-min Stress Relief on the Go: This is my latest video with 3 simple techniques that you can tap into anytime you have a little break. One of the techniques works on a key acupressure point for high-blood pressure and other heart-related issues.
   

I hope everyone’s safe with a strong heart! Please leave me a comment below.

To you heath!