Spiritual Heart Health

February has been proclaimed as National Heart Month.

According to the American Heart Association (AHA), while heart disease and stroke kill one in every 3.7 men, one in 2.4 women lose their lives to heart disease and stroke – the no. 1 and no. 3 killers of women. By way of comparison, breast cancer kills one in 29 women.

During the month I see and read many wonderful tips and suggestions in maintaining a healthy heart.

• Cholesterol below 200
• Blood pressure below 120/80
• Blood glucose below 100 mg/dL of blood
• Body Mass Index (BMI) below 25
• Sodium 1500 mg daily
• No more than 450 calories worth of sugar-sweetened beverages/week
• Exercise – (moderate) 150 mins/week (vigorously) 75 mins/week

These are all minimum guidelines  which address the physical end but many times very little attention is given to  spiritual health.

 Today I read an article written Fr. Miles Sheehan, S.J., where he asks the following questions;

 How might your heart and my heart sound if we were to be examined by the Divine Physician, and our hearts compared to the ideal: the perfect Sacred Heart of Jesus?

Does your heart beat strongly or regularly out of love for God and others? Or is our spiritual pulse weak and irregular and chaotic?

Does the love of God flow cleanly through our hearts, refreshed by the Spirit, and sent out to strengthen us to do God’s work? Maybe there are problems, spiritual heart murmurs that need repair. We receive God’s love but it might be our heart is weak, a valve leaks, or it has become narrow and clogged.

In order to bring our hearts closer to perfection of the Sacred Heart of Jesus he offers the following prayer:

Divine Physician, fix my heart to be like your Sacred Heart:

Fill it with your love, give it the oxygen of your Spirit, 
let its beat be strong and in step with the rhythm of your heart.

Make my heart like yours: loving, free, and open.

Spirituality and Medicine

Inner peace and spirituality enhances the Quality of Life, especially in people suffering with chronic diseases/illnesses.  Little by little the mainstream medical profession has started to see that religion/spirituality and medicine do mix.

Research examining the connections between spirituality and quality of life (QOL) has mainly been in the context of "chronic and life-threatening" diseases such as cancer, HIV infection, heart disease, and spinal cord injury, the investigators wrote. That research has found positive associations between "spiritual well-being" and QOL.  But studies looking at the impact of spirituality on QOL in people with chronic mental illnesses are sparse, they noted.

"Our study suggests that the spirituality and religiosity domains of QOL have an important influence on other aspects of QOL of patients with schizophrenia," the authors concluded. In light of this, they advise clinicians to assess the spirituality status and its meaning to each patient and encourage patients to "turn to religion more frequently if they consider it useful in dealing with their suffering."

The above mentioned findings are from a study that was published in Psychiatry Research 12/2011

Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life.
When you help, you see life as weak.
When you fix, you see life as broken.
When you serve, you see life as whole.
Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul  Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. 1 Peter 4:10

Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist who wrote of his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp, wrote: “Man is not destroyed by suffering; he is destroyed by suffering without meaning” .

One of the challenges physicians face is to help people find meaning and acceptance in the midst of suffering and chronic illness. Medical ethicists have reminded us that religion and spirituality form the basis of meaning and purpose for many people .

Cure is not possible for many illnesses, but I firmly believe that there is always room for healing. Healing can be experienced as acceptance of illness and peace with one's life. This healing, I believe, is at its core spiritual.

This was taken from The role of spirituality in health care, by Christina M. Puchalski, MD, MS