Mind Your Heart: A Mind/Body Approach to Stress Management, Exercise, and Nutrition for Heart Health - Softcover

Benson, Herbert; Casey, Aggie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743237021 ISBN 13: 9780743237024

Publisher: Free Press, 2004

Synopsis

Prevent, Control, and Manage Heart Disease with This Personalized Mind/Body Program.
Based on the innovative Cardiac Wellness Program at the world-renowned Mind/Body Medical Institute, founded by pioneering physician and researcher Herbert Benson, M.D., Mind Your Heart offers a balanced and holistic approach to heart health that combines lifestyle changes with cutting-edge medical procedures. With this program, you can lower your blood pressure and cholesterol, lose weight, increase physical fitness, and help prevent and manage heart disease.

About this title

About the Author:

Herbert Benson, MD, is the Mind Body Medical Institute Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School. He is the author of the mega-bestselling book, The Relaxation Response, as well as ten other trade books. His groundbreaking work established the modern field of mind body medicine. Dr. Benson is the Director Emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Aggie Casey, M.S., R.N., is the Director and Clinical Nurse Specialist for the Cardiac Wellness Program. She is also a Researcher and the Clinical Director of Affiliate Cardiac Programs at the Mind/Body Medical Institute and an Associate in Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Introduction

Congratulations! By picking up this book, you have taken the first step toward improving the health of your heart.

As health care professionals, we see people every day who are concerned about heart disease. Perhaps, like some of our patients, you are recovering from a heart attack or have experienced chest pain known as angina. You may be concerned that you are at risk for a heart attack or stroke because you have high blood pressure, diabetes, or high cholesterol. If so, we think this book will provide helpful advice about how you can make changes, starting today, that will improve the health of your heart.

Mind Your Heart builds on the authors' more than thirty-five years of research and patient care. Here you will find, for the first time, a step-by-step guide to heart health that combines the latest information about stress management, nutrition, and exercise. This complements advice offered in earlier books by Dr. Herbert Benson, especially The Relaxation Response and The Wellness Book.

The strategies we describe in these pages are the same ones that we offer to patients in our Cardiac Wellness Program at the Mind/Body Medical Institute. The basic Cardiac Wellness Program lasts for thirteen consecutive weeks, during which participants attend weekly three-hour sessions. The Extended Cardiac Wellness Program lasts for twelve months and consists of thir-teen weekly three-hour sessions and eighteen bimonthly three-hour sessions. Many of our patients are referred to the clinic after being diagnosed with heart disease. Slightly more than half of our patients are men. Ages vary, but most people are between fifty-five and sixty years old when they enter our program.

The Cardiac Wellness Program is just one of several clinical programs that we offer at the Mind/Body Medical Institute. We also run programs to help people deal with infertility, insomnia, menopause, chronic pain, and general stress-related symptoms. Founded in 1988 at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, the Mind/Body Medical Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing scientific research, public education, and professional training in the field of behavioral medicine. This field, also known as mind/body medicine, aims to foster your own natural capacity to heal in a way that enhances more traditional medical approaches such as medication and surgery. At the Mind/

Body Medical Institute, we employ an interdisciplinary team of exercise physiologists, advanced practice nurses, dietitians, psychologists, and physicians who together have developed the techniques you will find in this book.

Of course, we realize that it is not easy to make changes in behavior and lifestyle. We also respect the fact that you are an individual. For both these reasons, we've included quizzes and exercises to help you identify your own particular risks as well as a number of strategies and techniques for behavior change, so that you can choose the ones you feel most comfortable with.

Thousands of people have already completed our mind/body programs and made significant changes in their lives. We hope that this book will provide a useful road map for you as you embark on your own journey of change. Happy reading!

Aggie Casey, M.S., R.N.

Herbert Benson, M.D.

Copyright © 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0743237021
• ISBN 13: 9780743237024
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352