Experts estimate the total direct and indirect costs of death and disability from heart disease and stroke to exceed R8 billion a year. The current worldwide statistics for metabolic syndrome (type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance, combined with high cholesterol and high blood pressure) indicate that 150 million people already have it. These numbers are expected to increase to 300 million by 2020. Compare this to HIV with 22 million positive cases in Africa and 35 million worldwide, and it is clear that we have to address all the chronic diseases of lifestyle if we really want to make a difference to the burden of disease in South Africa.

According to a recent Medical Research Council (MRC) report, heart disease is the second biggest killer of South Africans after Aids. Every single day 30 South Africans die from heart attacks and 60 from strokes alone; 70% of these deaths occur in people younger than 55 years of age. Heart disease is not the male only problem it was thought to be years ago. One out of four (25%) SA women younger than 60 is affected. Heart disease is the cause of death in 20% of all deaths in women.

HEART RESEARCH

As reported in the British Medical Journal, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in modern society. Employees with high job strain, a combination of high demands at work and low job control, have high stress levels and more than twice the risk of death from heart disease compared with employees who have low job strain. The stress levels and risk for employees with effort-reward imbalance (low salary, lack of social approval, and few career opportunities relative to efforts required at work) were 2.5 times higher. High job strain also showed an increased total cholesterol at the five year follow up, while effort-reward imbalance showed an increase in body weight. Being overwhelmed is just as bad for your health and happiness, as being underwhelmed.

More and more research studies show the link between the heart, the emotions, stress and the fact that the heart also functions as brain: The heart has receptor sites for, and manufactures, peptides that are identical to the neurotransmitter message carrier molecules inside the brain. It is now crystal clear that the heart is a very important endocrine gland, making and releasing the major hormone ANF (atrial natriuretic factor). ANF has a profound effect on the brain's limbic structure and function. The limbic system is the seat of the emotions and stress survival reaction, and is also called the emotional brain. The limbic system includes the hippocampus where the memory, learning and control centres for the entire hormonal system resides. 60-65% of heart cells are neurons (nervous system cells), and not muscle cells as previously believed. These neurons are identical to brain neurons. 50% of the heart neuron cells translate information from the whole body to keep it functioning as a harmonious whole. The other 50% have a direct, unmediated neural connection with the emotional brain inside the head, with a 24/7 heart-brain-heart dialogue of which we are completely unconscious. The heart is a powerful electromagnetic generator that creates an electromagnetic field that encompasses body and extends 3-5 metres away from it. One can actually take an ECG (electro cardiogram) reading one metre away from the body, with no wires attached. This electromagnetic field has a profound effect on the brain, furnishing radio wave patterns from which the brain draws material to create an internal experience of the world. Ultimately, everything in our lives depends on our emotional (feeling, and so on) response to events.

Stress accelerates your heart rate through secretion of the adrenal stress hormones adrenalin, noradrenalin and the long-term stress hormone cortisol. Stress is initially experienced as emotions or feelings within the limbic system of the brain. ANF influences not only the heart muscle contraction, pressure in blood vessels and kidneys, but also the mood-influencing adrenal glands, as well as the brain. In the brain, parasympathetic or sympathetic impulses coming from the heart help trigger the onset of either calming or excitatory thoughts and emotions. Research also shows that by focusing on, or visualising feelings of love, peace and gratitude, breathing and heart rate slow down, and become synchronised and harmonious. Regular meditation practice has a similar effect. In emotionally healthy people, there appears to be a strong tendency for the heart and brain to have a smoothly functioning dialogue, and to remain synchronised, or entrained. Entrainment reflects a positive frame of mind, but also helps create it, in part by enhancing the balance of the autonomic nervous system (parasympathetic – relaxing, and sympathetic – excitatory, system). The body, clearly, can help heal the mind. But what gets this healing process started? The mind itself. Your mind, when focused on appreciation, positive self-talk, love and peace, has a limitless power to trigger physical and emotional healing.

According to Candace Pert in her new book Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d, neural nests that form pathways after repeated firing in specific patterns (compare this to wild animals treading the same pathway to the water every single day), form memory not only in the brain, but also in the heart, spinal cord, immune system – actually all systems linked by autonomic ganglia and part of the psychosomatic network. This network comprises the firing between neurons in the nervous system (only 2% of the information system), the link of ligands (peptides, hormones, neurotransmitters) to their receptors (98% of the information system), and the matrix, or intricate spider web of collagen fibres that link throughout the bodymind, and extending into every single cell. According to James Oschman in his book Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis, the living matrix can be compared to a liquid crystal and it is a physical entity explaining how energy healing works, and also instantaneous, or 'miraculous' healing. Through instant transmission along the matrix, new molecules of emotion can bind to receptors, with an immediate healing effect. On the surface, this is the benefit of repeating positive affirmations and on a deeper, spiritual level, the epiphany or transcendent moment the mystics talk about, of finally being able to let go and release old, buried emotions of past core emotional trauma, from the cells of your body, especially the heart, and creating new pathways of health and well-being, new 'elsewheres of thought' as Ramtha (JZ Knight) said in the movie What the Bleep do we Know?