Find out how stress and sleep affect hypertension.
Stress and lack of sleep are totally normal in today’s world. They’re not normal for your body, though.
Sure, your body needs stress to perform, escape danger, and other essential things, but you shouldn’t be constantly walking around stressed out of your mind. Neither should you walk around like a zombie on four hours of sleep every night. Too much stress and not enough sleep have detrimental affects to your overall health and wellbeing, but especially to your heart.
Stress affects your blood pressure
Have you ever felt so stressed that you can literally feel your pulse rising? Stress can temporarily cause your blood pressure to spike. If truly temporary, that rise isn’t harmful. However, if you find yourself chronically stressed out, you might find that your blood pressure never quite settles. That can be detrimental to your health and have the same affect as chronic high blood pressure.
Stress affects your sleep
Stress doesn’t just affect your blood pressure. It also affects your sleep. If you’re super stressed throughout the day, your sleep will be affected. Stress makes it really hard to relax. If you’re having a hard time relaxing, it will be almost impossible to fall asleep.
Poor sleep affects your blood pressure
Sleep is so important for your body. Sleep is the time that your body recovers from the day, muscles repair themselves, and cells regenerate. If you don’t get enough sleep, your body never gets the chance to recover. If you’re stressed throughout the day and you don’t sleep well, your blood pressure never has a chance to fall back to a normal level. And if you don’t sleep well you’ll be more stressed the next day. It’s an endless cycle!
How to reduce stress and sleep better
One of the ways that you can lower your blood pressure is to exercise regularly. Exercising every day will help you lose weight, which will help lower your blood pressure by itself. Exercise also is a great natural stress-reliever and will also help you sleep better!
Another way to reduce stress and sleep better is to practice meditation. Meditating is a great way to wind down and relax and alleviate any stress that’s leftover throughout the day. It will also help you sleep so much better!
Stress, sleep, and hypertension are all interconnected! Take care of one and you’ll take care of the rest!