Stress can give you a real heart attack even when your arteries are perfectly healthy. Doctors call it broken heart syndrome, and it can follow losing someone you love or even winning the lottery.
Dr. Tara Narula, a board certified cardiologist and chief medical correspondent for ABC News, sat down with Lewis and shared what her patients say when she asks how they are. Almost nobody mentions blood pressure. They tell her they are overwhelmed, and many of them cry.
She knows that fear from the inside. At 22, in medical school, she lost vision in part of her right eye and spent the first weeks reading every stumble as proof of something worse. A note card from her mom with the Serenity Prayer pulled her out of the spiral.
In The Healing Power of Resilience she lays out eight tools, and she walks Lewis through acceptance and flexible thinking, then makes the case for purpose and real social connection. She also explains why burnout is the final phase of chronic stress, and why a study across 52 countries found chronically stressed people are twice as likely to have a heart attack.
You will finish this one wanting to call a friend for coffee and start practicing resilience before you need it.
The Healing Power of Resilience: A New Prescription for Health and Well-Being
