Life gets stressful sometimes, which means it's harder to get quality sleep and more difficult to cope when challenges come our way. Many people turn to exercise and therapy to cope, but what if your diet can help as well? In addition to physical activity and staying connected to loved ones, your diet plays a huge role in how your body reacts to stress.

Read the Body Reboot book and learn why eating a diet that's high in fat and protein as opposed to carbs can help you have more energy and thus help you better manage stress and sleep better too.

Sleep
Two sleep-related problems that plague many people — sleep deprivation and sleep apnea — have been linked to a higher risk of heart disease.

Sleep deprivation. Over time, inadequate or poor quality sleep can increase the risk for a number of chronic health problems, including heart disease. Studies have linked short-term sleep deprivation with several well-known contributors to heart disease, including high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and high blood pressure.
Sleep apnea. This common cause of loud, disruptive snoring makes people temporarily stop breathing many times during the night. Up to 83% of people with heart disease also have sleep apnea, according to some estimates.

Check your stress (and negative thoughts) at the door
A growing body of evidence suggests that psychological factors are — literally — heartfelt, and can contribute to cardiac risk. Stress from all sorts of challenging situations and events plays a significant role in cardiovascular symptoms and outcome, particularly heart attack risk. The same is true for depression, anxiety, anger, hostility, and social isolation. Acting alone, each of these factors heightens your chances of developing heart problems

Fortunately, you can learn healthier ways to respond to stress that may help your heart and improve your quality of life. These include relaxation exercises (deep breathing, guided imagery), physical activity (walking, yoga), and staying connected with friends, co-workers, family members.

Learning better ways to respond to stress and get a better night's rest is important not only for a healthy lifestyle but so you can also continue to stay healthy in the years to come. Relaxation exercises, enjoying time with friends, and physical activities can help, but so can your diet. For more ways to improve your sleep and keep the stress levels down check out Harvard Health Publishing.

At the time of writing this post, we're currently giving away free copies of the Body Reboot book. We're doing this because it's our mission to increase awareness and to help people lose weight and get healthy! If you help us cover the cost of shipping, we’ll send a copy to your door FREE. Go over to this page to see if there are any copies left.