3 Things to Do If Heart Problems Are Messing With Your Sleep

Good sleep can be tough to come by when you have a heart condition—nearly three quarters of people with heart failure in particular say they have trouble getting quality rest. And, as you might’ve guessed, crappy sleep itself can contribute to heart problems. One 2020 study of nearly 409,000 people found that those who slept fewer than seven hours per night, or who struggled with insomnia or serious daytime fatigue, had a higher risk of developing heart failure than participants who didn’t have those issues.²There’s also a link between high blood pressure (which raises the risk of heart failure and stroke) and lack of quality sleep.

Okay, so we get that there’s a strong heart-sleep connection, but why? Richard Wright, MD, a cardiologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, tells SELF that scientists are still trying to sort out what’s behind the link between bad sleep and heart failure—but hormones seem like one likely culprit. “We know that hormones that regulate sleep, like melatonin, are disrupted when you have heart failure,” he says.

At the same time: “Heart disease shares similar risk factors with common sleep disorders, creating a lot of overlap,” Yonatan Greenstein, MD, associate professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, tells SELF. Those shared risk factors include having type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure. “That could be driving heart disease or making it worse,” he says.

If you’ve got a heart condition, taking steps to save your sleep isn’t just important for your comfort (though that’s really important!)—it can improve your overall health, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Here’s what could be causing crummy rest with a heart problem and what to do next.

Watch out for signs of sleep apnea.

If you struggle to stay awake during the day, someone has complained about your snoring, or you wake up in the middle of the night gasping to catch your breath, there’s a possibility you have sleep apnea, a condition that causes you to stop and start breathing throughout the night. It can affect up to 80% of people with heart-related problems like high blood pressure, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation (an irregular, fast heartbeat).⁵ One possible reason: Sleep apnea can contribute to worsened left ventricular diastolic dysfunction, meaning the heart’s left ventricle stiffens. This puts extra strain on the organ, boosting someone’s heart rate and blood pressure—and increasing their risk of heart failure.

You should undergo a sleep evaluation to get diagnosed with sleep apnea—so stay alert for signs to flag to your doctor. (A few other symptoms can include a parched throat in the morning, headaches, or even mood changes throughout the day, per the Mayo Clinic.)

“Sleep apnea is usually one of the first things we think of if someone is having trouble sleeping,” W. Christopher Winter, MD, a neurologist and sleep medicine physician with Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine, tells SELF. “Luckily, there are a lot of ways we can combat it.” Treatment can include a special mouthguard to keep your throat open or a CPAP machine, which delivers air pressure down your throat through a mask you wear as you drift off. In more severe cases, a doctor might recommend surgery to remove throat tissue. (Depending on your unique symptoms, they can guide you on what approach is ideal.)

Tweak your sleeping position.

When you have heart failure, it’s common for fluid to build up in your lungs as you lie down—which you might not even realize when you’re back upright and going about your day, Sanjay D. Naik, MD, a cardiovascular disease specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian Westchester and ColumbiaDoctors, tells SELF. When you lie down at night, that fluid can inch toward your trachea (the tube that connects your voice box to your lungs) and upper lungs, which can make breathing a little difficult, Dr. Naik explains.

To fix this, Dr. Naik recommends switching up your sleeping position: Either prop up your upper body with a few pillows if you’re most comfortable on your back, or lie on your right side if you’re a side sleeper. (Some people with heart failure are uncomfortable sleeping on their left side because it can cause the position of the heart to shift, Dr. Greenstein says.) Medications like diuretics (a.k.a. water pills) can also help with breathing difficulties if you sleep on your back.

Prioritize your mental health.

Having a heart problem—or any health condition, really—comes with two sets of issues to grapple with: the actual symptoms you experience directly because of the condition and the mental load of dealing with it all. That stress can compound sleep issues too.⁶

Dr. Greenstein often recommends cognitive behavioral therapy for her patients with heart failure. This modality can help you sort through thoughts and behaviors that might be impacting your physical and mental health, including your sleep quality. “Living with a chronic medical condition is difficult, can be scary, and exerts constant personal stress,” Dr. Greenstein says. “The importance of treating anxiety, depression, or other psychological disorders through therapy or medications cannot be underestimated.” If you’re unsure how to find a therapist who really gets it, ask a primary care physician or cardiologist—it’s possible they can make a solid referral. You can also try picking a consistent sleep and wake time, making sure your bedroom is as quiet, dark, and cool as you can, and powering down electronics before bed, according to the CDC.

If you’re consistently struggling with sleep, don’t brush it off; talk to a doctor. They should be able to help you take steps to snooze easier at night—or refer you to someone who can. While it might feel iffy for a while, you can and will get to the bottom of what heart-related thing is coming between you and the rest your body needs.

 

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   

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Improve Your Mental Health With These 6 Mind-Changing Exercises

If you live with anxiety, chronic stress or another mental health disorder, you know how negative thinking can affect your well-being. Sometimes it feels like there's nothing you can do but have the thoughts, letting them influence your emotions, behaviors and actions. But that doesn't have to be the case. 

Thought exercises can help you see experiences in a new light, and change how much power your negative thoughts have over you. Not only can thought exercises help you ease stress in the moment, they also can help us to make our subconscious thoughts go in more productive, helpful directions over time. Let's go through the top six thought exercises you can do to improve your mental health. We'll even show you how to perform them. 

What is a thought exercise? 

Thought exercises are new ways to think about a given circumstance or experience that can help us get out of a stuck or unhelpful way of thinking. While some thought exercises have been studied extensively by psychological researchers, others are offered by psychologists and clinical mental health counselors because they've been helpful anecdotally for specific types of patients. Thought exercises may be suggested by your therapist, whether they are online or in-person.

It's important to keep in mind that there isn't a one-size-fits-all thought exercise. Feel free to try one of them for a few weeks and see if you like the way they impact your mental health and feelings of well-being. If not, you can try a different one. Thought exercises are meant to be a method of seeing the world differently, not a medical treatment. 

What are the benefits of thought exercises for mental health?

Reframing thoughts is one of the building blocks of cognitive behavioral therapy, which has been found effective in many studies.

• A go-to thought exercise can help one maintain calm during a stressful moment and continue functioning, staving off a more severe reaction like an anxiety attack. 
  
• Thought exercises can reduce the duration and intensity of anxiety symptoms even when not combined with traditional therapy.
  
• When paired with a mental health app, thought exercises can provide a log of one's growth and changes in mental health.
  
• Thought exercises can make us more mindful of what triggers our anxiety, allowing us to make life modifications that help us to experience anxiety  less often. 
  

6 thought exercises that will boost your mental health 

Next time you're feeling stressed out, try one of these methods to help combat overwhelming feelings.

The self-observation exercise

Many spiritual traditions include some kind of self-observation or mindfulness exercise, but it is helpful in a completely nonspiritual context as well. When you begin to experience the symptoms you associate with anxiety, you can use this exercise to get curious and learn more about what you're going through. Here's how to do it:

1. When you're feeling anxious and have the opportunity to take a couple of minutes to yourself, do so. Get away from others so you won't be interrupted, even if it's just a few minutes.

2. Start noting the way that every element of your body feels. Are you feeling the anxiety in your shoulders, neck, stomach or head? Are you experiencing other symptoms, like fatigue or a headache? Don't judge the feelings, just note them, like you were observing a scientific experiment and needed to catch everything.

3. Then turn your self-observation to your thoughts. What are the specific stressors cycling through your mind? Try to catalog them, rather than letting them overwhelm you. When you've noticed one, let it go, recognizing that you've "heard" it. 

4. If you can get to a place of fully focusing on bodily and mental sensations, you may find yourself able to calm down, doing things like releasing the muscles you've discovered are tense or letting thoughts go instead of holding onto them intensely. This may take a few tries.

The act of self-observation can be a way to take your mind off the anxiety and come back to your body. When we're in fight-or-flight mode, the anxiety gets us to safety, but if we are physically safe, this can be a way to evaluate our body and find our baseline again. 

Keep a thought record

One of the ways that people better understand their anxiety symptoms is by recording their thoughts. This can be done in a traditional paper journal, but there are other options, especially when it's inconvenient to carry an extra notebook everywhere. The app Thought Diary is a simple interface, letting you write down your mood and any details about it. It also includes other thought exercises, such as practicing gratitude and analyzing a thought.

Reviewing your thought record occasionally can help you draw connections, including things like how sleep, exercise and nutrition impact your anxiety symptoms. 

Interrupt anxious thinking

Anxious thinking respond best to being distracted by a different task. These techniques are more about what effectively distracts you and less about a technically "right" method. 

• Try tensing and relaxing different muscles in your body, focusing on the muscle activity and seeing if it can help you stop thinking anxious thoughts.
  
• Breathing with an intentional count, like four counts in and four counts out.
  
• Putting on music, an audiobook or a radio show can interrupt anxious thoughts and bring your mind to bear on something else.
  
• Loudly saying that you're done thinking this way or verbally speaking affirmations can help get out of one's head and hear a positive voice more clearly.
  
• Choosing a soothing task that is also mentally engaging: word games on your phone, loading a dishwasher, doing a yoga flow or other set routine of stretching can all be effective anxiety interruptions. 
  
• Counting backward slowly sometimes works to interrupt the flow of anxiety.
  

Use cognitive defusion exercises 

Cognitive defusion exercises are all about getting an outside perspective on our thoughts, or strategies that help us detach and look more clearly at our thoughts. They are used frequently in CBT and other types of cognitive therapy. 

• Use a silly voice: Some people find it helpful to detach from their thoughts by using a silly voice  to say something like, "Oh, you think this is very concerning, do you?" or some other observation about the thought. 
  
• Leaves on a stream: Some people use the visulazation that their thoughts are floating down a river, coming to them and then going away, as a way to see the thoughts as separate from their core identity.
  
• Label your thoughts: Some people find it helpful to identify "that is an anxious thought" or "this is a fearful thought" as they have the thoughts, helping to take them out of being an assessment of reality and treating them as separate items which don't have to be believed outright. 
  
• "Thank you mind": When our minds tell us a warning in the form of an anxious thought, we can offer gratitude to our mind for trying to help us and warn us.
  

Practice self-compassion

Anxiety sometimes presents as excessive worry that one isn't good enough or has negative traits. These thoughts, when played on a loop, can be demoralizing and can make everyday activities miserable. A way to combat this negative self-talk is to practice self-compassion. While it may seem odd at first, trying to see your current situation the way you'd see it if a good friend was going through it can be a start. Give yourself the kind of comfort you'd give a friend, instead of the harsh critique you often give yourself. 

Another self-compassion exercise is to find and focus on a photograph of yourself from childhood. Instead of directing your thoughts toward your adult self, direct them to that child. Recognize that your adult self deserves the same kind of comfort that a child deserves, as you are also still learning, albeit different things. 

The worry tree

The worry tree is a tool developed for those who experience compulsive or continual worry to help them make a conscious decision between worrying or doing something else. It is a flowchart graphic that is customizable to the person, but essentially starts by questioning, "what exactly am I worried about?" then "Can I do something about it?" and "Can I do something about it right now?" The tree guides people to let worries go when nothing can be done, to make a clear plan if nothing can be done right now, and to go do something if there is something useful to be done about the worry right now. It can help avoid rumination, where we think the same anxiety-inducing thoughts over and over without relief. 

The bottom line 

Thought exercises can feel different from our typical ways of thinking, but if you remain curious, you may find your mind changing, experiencing more methods for how to think positively over time. If you find that thought exercises make your anxious symptoms worse, you may have an ineffective thought exercise for yourself, or your anxiety might respond better to treatment from a psychiatrist or counselor. Talking with a mental health professional is a good idea to get better answers about your specific situation.

 
 

This is only for your information, kindly take the advice of your doctor for medicines, exercises and so on.   

https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com. one can see my crochet creations  
https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com. feel free to view for easy, simple and healthy recipes    
https://kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com. for info on knee replacement

https://GSiyers home remedies.blogspot.com     will be latest addition to my blogs. I'm going to add posts there, do give me your valuable feed back on my blogs. Thanks a lot, take care, be healthy and be happy.