09 Feb
Uncategorized, Wise Gurus, WWB Book Wise Club

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? Book Wise Review & Recommendation from Coach Lauroly for American Heart Health Month

It’s American Heart Month and we are hearing so much about how to prevent heart disease. It’s so important here in America that we devote an entire month to heart health education. Why? Here are the sobering facts straight from the CDC ( Center of Disease Control). Read on for deeper matters of the heart…

Sobering: One person dies every 33 seconds in the United States from cardiovascular disease. About 695,000 people in the United States died from heart disease in 2021—that’s 1 in every 5 deaths. More sobering is women fall beneath the radar when it comes to heart disease and we now understand how hormones can be a tricky factor when it comes to heart disease prevention. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to respect and understand your hormones and especially as you navigate perimenopause and menopause.

Inspiring: The good news is 90 percent of heart disease is preventable through healthier diet, regular exercise, and not smoking. Heart disease is considered one of the lifestyle diseases. What is a lifestyle disease? It’s a disease that potentially can be prevented by changes in diet, environment, and lifestyle. Really? Yes, really.

Now that we covered the basics of heart disease prevention, I’d like to share a repost from two Q&A’s I was fortunate to hold with authors who have explored the psycho-social aspects of heart health. What we might call the emotional heart. We learn from a cardiologist and science journalist that broken hearts can lead to chronic illness and sometimes death. Both of the books previously featured here at World Wise Beauty explore the mysteries of the heart from a heartfelt (no pun intended) and scientific perspective.

I highly recommend reading them as they will illuminate why listening to you heart both figuratively and literally matters so much to your health, happiness, and life as you know it. Below is a quick glean from the Q&A’s and a link to the Q&A Post if you choose to delve in more deeply.  I leave you here with a quote from a romantic author as it is almost Valentines Day! Happy Heart Day to all!

“Always listen to your heart, because even though
it’s on your left side, it’s always right.”
~Nicholas Sparks

 

Laura Connolly, CHC, Founder of World Wise Beauty

 

 

WHY LISTENING TO YOUR HEART MATTERS…

 

Coach Lauroly Introduction to the Q&A with Author and Doctor ‘Sandeep Jauhar’ and His Words of Wisdom for Your Review…
Visit Q&A Post Here
Coach Lauroly- “Another highly respected Wise Guru has joined me for a Q&A to talk about cultivating wellness wisdom and culture. I am honored to have Dr. Sandeep Jauhar here to discuss his new book ‘Heart ~ A History’. As a note to my readers who have not read the book yet, this book is much more than a scientific history of the heart. It’s an exploration of wellness philosophy, and a very personal engaging story. I also think it’s a call to action to change the paradigm of modern medicine today. Read this book and you will understand why a ‘change of heart’ is desperately needed in the field of medicine and in our society.

Dr. Sandeep Jauhar:  One of the reasons I wrote the book is I have a very malignant family history of heart disease. Both my maternal and paternal grandfathers died of sudden heart attack death. My maternal grandfather had a very unique heart attack event as he died shortly after a snake had bitten him. As with many stories passed down there was some family lore surrounding his death. I will explain… yes, he went home for lunch after he was bitten by a snake in his shop, and my father was with him. Neighbors brought in the snake they claimed did it and it was a large cobra. My grandfather took one look at it and said,  “Oh my gosh how could I have survived this and he slumped to the floor and went unconscious. By the time the paramedics arrived, my grandfather was dead. He clearly panicked when he saw the snake and literally had a heart attack before my father’s eyes. My family thought he died from the snake bite, but the doctors at the hospital said it was because of sudden cardiac death.

It’s very well documented today that intense emotional upset can lead to sudden death, either by causing a heart attack or in some cases by causing what is called broken heart syndrome or takotsubo cardiomyopathy. In response to intense emotional disruption, typically after a broken romantic relationship or after the death of a loved one, the heart acutely weakens into the shape of a Japanese Octopus trapping pot called called takotsubo and the acute weakening can lead to congestive heart failure, life threatening arrhythmia, and even sudden death. We now know that acute emotional stress can cause intense cardiac damage and even death.

 


Visit Q&A Here

Coach Lauroly Introduction followed by Author’s Words of Wisdom from Q&A

It’s a pleasure to have Florence Williams back at World Wise Beauty to chat about her latest book ‘Heartbreak’ a Personal and Scientific journey. Her previous book ‘Nature Fix’ is a favorite of mine and I highly recommend readers check it out if you missed it. I chose Heartbreak as the Spring Book Wise pick because I believe there are a-lot of heart broken people out there right now. I also think it opens up a great conversation in our culture about our human social condition and the danger of too much isolation. From a wellness perspective the book elevates the understanding that our emotional health is supremely important to our physical health. There is so much to be gleaned from her latest book ‘Heartbreak’ and it deserves a strong introduction.

UNBREAK MY HEART

To start, ‘Heartbreak’ is full of fascinating cutting-edge science on the effects of heartbreak on our mind, body, and spirit, while also being a raw personal story of the author’s own experience with heartbreak and her desire to speed up the healing process. Sound heavy? Well it is, but the research and her awesome travel stories makes it worth it and extremely fascinating.

    KILLING ME SOFTLY

The book is also an examination of the unraveling of a ‘self’ when we experience separation from our loved ones. It seems some relationships and marriages can either nurture our growth and enhance our well-being, or they can force parts of our identity into jail-cells and make us sick. It’s complicated! While you can become sick from a heartbreak, Florence discovered unhappy marriages can also chronically affect our health negatively. There is a lot of grey area with this topic, but it’s fascinating to learn just how important the quality of our attachments and social connectedness is to our health. But don’t lock up your heart just yet, it’s all survivable. It is better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all right?

AS TIME GOES BY

I was impressed with how Florence merged her discovery of social science with her own account of grief and healing. Studying ‘social pain’ and why heartbreak hurts so much is no easy task when your own heart is aching from the loss of your marriage. I think doing the research for her book was a creative and empowering approach for getting through her loss and pain. No-one wants to hear “time heals all wounds”, but if not a healer, time can allow us space to breathe, restore, and recover.

On the upside, Florence has definitely made it through, and came out on the other side of her heartbreak stronger, wiser, and open to what’s next in her life. She also wrote an enlightening book for us all to reflect on. Florence William’s ‘Heartbreak’ is not just about heartbreak and divorce, it is also about how we human beings are hardwired for social connection, belonging, and interdependence. Before I get started with questions for Florence, I would like to share with her and my readers wise words from an Irish scholar and writer John O’Donohue.

“The Human Heart is a Theater of Longing.”

“The arduous task of being a human is to balance longing and belonging so that they work with and against each other to ensure that all the potential and gifts that sleep in the clay of the heart may be awakened and realized in this one life.” ~John O’Donohue

Amen to that, and bravo to all of us on the hero’s journey of loving, connecting, and belonging. ‘Heartbreak’ is a must read if you want to understand how each part of our holistic being (mind, body, spirit) can guide us well if we attune to the trinity and nourish our social human experience. ~ Coach Lauroly

 

Florence Williams: Our bodies do not like to be lonely. They take it seriously enough that, according to Cole, our white blood cells in our immune systems actually “listen for loneliness.” If we feel we are alone in the world, without strong social support, our bodies know we are more likely to get injured, perhaps because we are easier prey for predators. So our immune systems try to be helpful by up-regulating inflammation, which is good for wound-healing, and by down-regulating virus-fighting genes, because viruses are spread in groups. It’s exactly the wrong response for modern life, (hello, pandemic) and when we live long enough to suffer the woes of inflammation-mediated chronic disease like diabetes, hypertension, dementia, and metastatic cancer. The silver lining is that we know all this, and we can work hard to forge more meaningful connections – both to people and to the natural world. Our relationships are more important for health than we used to think. And we know access to nature can reduce stress, improve our immune systems, and boost our sociable nature by making us happier and healthier. We need more parks, greener cities and schools, and more equitable access to these resources.