Five Sure-Fire Ways to Irritate Your Arteries
If you were a contestant on the television game show, Family Feud®, and the topic presented was “Name the top five causes of coronary artery disease”, I bet you would be quick call out culprits like “High cholesterol”, “Obesity”, and “Cigarette smoking”. And you’d be right, but I have a strong hunch that you’d never guess the #1 answer that scientific researchers would call out if asked to respond to that same very question—INFLAMMATION!
Systemic (body-wide) inflammation is running rampant in today’s “growing” population. This is because the way in which many of us choose to live our lives can actually cause the soft insides of our blood vessels to become significantly irritated, priming them to overreact. And, believe me; over-reactive, inflamed blood vessels do not handle the daily insults they must endure lightly!
The “insults” I am talking about are vascular nicks and cuts which occur when sharp-edged, red blood cells and abrasive cholesterol molecules strike the soft inside walls of a vessel while rapidly coursing through the body. Instead of a normal reparative response, an overly inflamed vessel will respond by packing the area with extra “Band-Aids®” (plaque), if you will. As result, the vessel’s internal diameter becomes partially obstructed. The narrowing of arteries then increases blood pressure, forcing the blood to flow through its constricted channels with greater force, creating even more occasions for injury.
So, if you are hankering for some cardiovascular disease, here are five sure-fire ways to keep the inflammatory fires burning inside your vessel walls:
1. Smoke up a storm—cigarettes, cigars, “medical marijuana”
2. Satisfy your hunger with sugars and simple carbohydrates
3. Skimp on sleep
4. Sedentary living
5. Stress—live with lots of it!
When it comes to our bodies, inflammation can literally become a “state of being”—a state I can assure you that you DO NOT want to live in! Reversing the above lifestyle habits will douse the flames of the inflammation that has been burning up your good heart health.