Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Beating Stress With Fewer Stress Beats?

I wondered briefly if life would improve if we knew from birth exactly how many heartbeats our life would last. That quickly went out the window when I realized that all forms of cardiovascular exercise would plummet and we'd descend into a species of slugs. Still, there are plenty of medics out there who'd caution against the kind of blood pressure boost that comes from inordinate amounts of "worry-based" stress. So if we think of each of these heart "stress beats" costing us about 1.5 heartbeats worth of life - well, almost no one likes the idea of accelerating the aging process.

Today I was part of an unusually distressing conversation at work, one that had the stress beats pounding away. It called for unusual measures. I actually used my break to physically lie down for a while. The choice between living long and living short is an easy one, no matter what it takes!

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