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Follow Your Heart or Think With Your Mind The Heart-Mind Connection

When faced with a decision, your mind may come to logical solutions, and if you follow your heart, it may lead you to fulfillment. Did you know that the heart can send quiet and constant emotion-based signals to the mind and vice versa?

With Valentine’s Day in February, no wonder we celebrate American Heart Month. Since the brain is interconnected with the heart, it’s only natural to bring awareness to both. Together, they are vital to longevity and a healthy life.

It is important to keep your heart healthy, as it feeds your brain oxygen and nutrients through your blood vessels and transports signals through our nervous system. A healthy heart leads to a healthy mind by decreasing risks of brain ailments, including; dementia, stroke and cognitive impairments. Conversely, the brain can tell the heart when to relax. Mental health, including stress, can have a huge impact on

By Belinda Burchick

heart health. Stress follows our daily, hectic life. Since stress increases blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, muscle tension and releases stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, constant long-term stress can lead to an unhealthy heart and mind. This heart-mind connection can go both ways. A person suffering from depression has double the risk of developing heart disease, whereas, a large number of people suffering from heart disease are faced with depression, primarily due to the stress of knowing their life is in danger.

Now for the good news. It sounds simple, but the key to longevity and mind health is taking steps to prevent heart disease and reduce stress.

Preventing and managing heart disease by making healthy food choices and being active can delay or lessen brain alterations linked to age-related cognitive decline. Humans were designed to move.

Now, let’s work on the mind. Did you know that positive emotions such as, love, gratitude, appreciation and compassion are good for your heart’s rhythm? Practice two actions every day: (1) Say Thank You, and, (2) Give a small smile to every person that you pass. Yes, including the grumpy ones. Smiling at your pet works too.

Find ways to relax or de-stress at least one hour each day. Walking is one way. When you are feeling overwhelmed, shift your focus from the world around you to the world within you. Just think of your heart and your mind working together, and you will notice a shift to a feeling of calmness.

Focus on the moment and practice not worrying about what will happen next. If your worries keep interfering with the moment, try writing them down in a notebook, then close the notebook. Now, the notebook has your worries. When we are socializing with people or pets, be fully engaged and appreciate the experience.

Just to repeat, being active benefits both the mind and the heart. So, next time you ponder if you should trust your heart, remember the heart-mind connection, and take the next step. This is how we build wisdom! n

Belinda Burchick, RPh, BPharm, has focused her career on geriatric pharmacy and automated dispensing systems to promote patient safety and improve health outcomes. For the last 10 years, she has served as Chief Pharmacy Officer (CPO) for a long-term care pharmacy, servicing the geriatric population in nursing homes, assisted living, independent living, and the senior day programs, such as, Pennsylvania’s LIFE programs and the PACE programs in multiple states. Belinda oversees the pharmacy operations in three pharmacies, located in Denver, Philadelphia and headquarters in Pittsburgh.