I'm afraid of my heart. I was in 4th grade, I think, when our school put on a healthy heart program that encouraged us to eat properly and exercise (spell "aerobic") in order to keep our hearts healthy. Like the talking tooth mascot for proper dental hygiene, this mascot was a heart in Tom Selleck gym shorts. While that image alone should be enough to terrify me, it was something said during one of these visits that really caused me concern.
Our hearts can only beat a billion times. Now that I can conceptualize a billion better, this is not as horrifying of a statistic as it was when I was ten. The presenter was trying to emphasize the need for people to have healthy hearts which don't need to beat as often, keeping a lower pulse when active or at rest. For me, it was like someone had put a countdown over my head. I could feel every beat of my heart and I even panicked that when I tried to slow it down, it only seemed to speed up.
My grandfather died of a heart attack at a relatively young age--one of the reasons I will never smoke a cigarette. I knew that it was a constant concern of my father, who had been fatherless since the age of thirteen. As I have gotten older, it has become more of a concern for me as well. When I was told that I couldn't give blood because my blood pressure was too high ... well ..., my blood pressure got higher.
Last night, having just finished a rather exhilarating match of Starcraft, I lay in bed unable to sleep due to the pounding of my heart. Again, attempts to slow it only seemed to make it beat faster. I could hear the presenter warn about a billion beats being our heart's upper limit. I thought about the medications that they put people on for high blood pressure and the medications they then put people on to counteract the first set of medicine's side affects.
I need to listen to my heart. I need to get healthier.
Our hearts can only beat a billion times. Now that I can conceptualize a billion better, this is not as horrifying of a statistic as it was when I was ten. The presenter was trying to emphasize the need for people to have healthy hearts which don't need to beat as often, keeping a lower pulse when active or at rest. For me, it was like someone had put a countdown over my head. I could feel every beat of my heart and I even panicked that when I tried to slow it down, it only seemed to speed up.
My grandfather died of a heart attack at a relatively young age--one of the reasons I will never smoke a cigarette. I knew that it was a constant concern of my father, who had been fatherless since the age of thirteen. As I have gotten older, it has become more of a concern for me as well. When I was told that I couldn't give blood because my blood pressure was too high ... well ..., my blood pressure got higher.
Last night, having just finished a rather exhilarating match of Starcraft, I lay in bed unable to sleep due to the pounding of my heart. Again, attempts to slow it only seemed to make it beat faster. I could hear the presenter warn about a billion beats being our heart's upper limit. I thought about the medications that they put people on for high blood pressure and the medications they then put people on to counteract the first set of medicine's side affects.
I need to listen to my heart. I need to get healthier.
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