THE FIRST GENTLEMAN HAS JUST HAD another tear in his heart.

I was mulling this when the 6.3 earthquake rocked Manila Thursday. A few minutes after, I wrote on Facebook: ?An earthquake just rocked the city and the FG has just been rushed to the hospital due to heart issues unrelated to the earthquake??

Imagine the barrage of comments it drew, but I shall not dwell on that. The state of his heart and health got me thinking again about how the brain, heart and emotions are intertwined.

Dr. John Kennedy, author of ?The 15-Minute Heart Cure: The Natural Way to Release Stress and Heal your Heart,? says stress is bad on the heart because when the ?flight or fight response? is triggered, adrenal and cortisol are released into the body and these have deleterious effects on the heart, blood pressure, inflammation, and so on.

Kennedy, director of Preventive Cardiology and Wellness at Marina del Rey Hospital in California, says that the last year he has given countless talks to doctors on the benefits of reducing stress.

?Of the last 3,000 of them I asked if emotional stress precipitates heart disease, well, 3,000 out of 3,000 agree. The emotions impact morbidity and mortality. We all agree, there is absolutely no question,? Kennedy stressed in a recent interview but added,

?However when I asked these same doctors what we do to teach our patients to reduce stress ? zero. Not one doctor was teaching his patients how to do this. Doctors don?t actually get paid to do this and also don?t have much time to do this. We are taught that a lot of stuff is just in your head. In fact, we are taught that psychiatry isn?t ?real medicine.??

Best-selling author Louise Hay writes in her book, ?How To Heal Your Life? that the heart is the center of joy and seat of emotions in our lives. She says how well your life?s blood flows through your heart, arteries, and veins is linked to the degree in which joy flows through your life.

?Cholesterol-blocked arteries symbolize a blocking of the flow of joy, or a suppression of emotion. Heart attacks happen when all the joy has been squeezed out of your heart in favor of the pursuit of money, position, or materialistic gain.?

Medical intuitive and neuropsychiatrist Monalisa Schulz says that unresolved and unexpressed anger, sadness, and fear actually cause vasoconstriction, a tightening of the blood vessels connected to the heart.

?When you feel anger or fear, these blood vessels constrict in response to an outpouring of chemicals from the sympathetic nervous system,? Schultz explains, ?This is not to say, though, that you should never feel fear or anger. Feeling and expressing all emotions, in a balanced way, is essential to heart health.?

In her book, ?Awakening Intuition? Schulz says we must move with our emotions. ?If you don?t move with your emotion, the emotion will go into your body and move the cells of your organs instead, possibly in the pattern of illness.?

MVP heart

There was a period in my life when I was constantly having heart palpitations for unknown reasons or perhaps, at that time, I had yet refused to deal with. The doctor attributed it to a case of Mitral Valve Prolapse (MVP). My heart is an MVP in that sense, having won and lost many battles over the years.

Another doctor said there was some short circuitry in my heart.

The episodes got me thinking about my emotions and the issues causing it. It was only when I was brave enough to deal with my problems that the horse in my heart began to settle down and I have been asymptomatic since.

When I had found a way to express my emotions in a healthier manner, my heart became calm and settled.

Expressing one?s emotions in a healthy manner benefits not only one?s heart but one?s relationships as well. Of course when you learn to express your emotions, relationships can sometimes get complicated, but often, the complication is worth the trouble, better than having to grin and bear it. Feeling the breadth and depth of emotions?happiness, joy, anger, grief, sadness, fear?and expressing them in a healthy manner will strengthen your heart, expand your spirit, grow your courage and help make your life an adventure worth living.

Presidential candidate Noynoy Aquino says, ?We should all pray for everyone who is sick.? We will. But perhaps, now is a good time for the FG and his significant other to address the deeper issues that may have caused the life-threatening tear in his heart.

E-mail the author at cathybabao@ gmail.com