How to protect your heart: emotionally, financially, and literally
(NewsNation Now) — Three women with hard-won insights explain how you can protect your heart: emotionally, financially and literally.
Mary Turner Thomson had been married for four years to the man of her dreams when she found out he had another wife, five fiancées and a total of 13 kids. She was left broke.
“It’s emotional terrorism,” Thompson said Monday on “Banfield.” Her latest book is “The Psychopath.”
Kaylie Kristina discovered her husband was cheating last fall, when their Ring doorbell cam captured him bidding farewell to a scantily clad woman who was not Kristina.
“I kind of had this gut feeling, this intuition that there was something off, but when I would express that out loud, he would just say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Kristina said on “Banfield.”
She posted the clip on TikTok with the caption: “When your husband is too sick to go on the family trip you planned.” A few days later, she posted, “Locks have been changed and he no longer resides here.”
Dr. Sharonne Hayes, founder of the Women’s Heart Clinic at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, says acute and chronic stress from events like these can lead to types of heart attacks that are much more common in women than men.
“One is called stress cardiomyopathy, which is also known as Takotsubo and broken heart,” Hayes said on “Banfield.” “And another is when an artery actually tears and causes a heart attack called spontaneous coronary artery dissection. So these are often triggered by emotional stress, anger, fear, tragedy, you know, COVID, and all of the things and the fears that go along with that.”
Hayes said she’s had some patients tell her they were going through the “most stressful period in my entire life” before the heart attacks.
Thomson says Taekwondo keeps her physically fit, while writing helps her mental health.
“I got it all out of my head, all out of my subconscious onto the paper, and I don’t have to worry about it anymore,” Thomson said. “I don’t have to think about it because I know it’s physically somewhere else.”
She encourages other people with trauma to write.
Kristina says she’s also focusing on staying healthy.
“You have to go get STD tested,” Kristina said. “And then … you know, just your regular well checks.”