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Lighten Your Load and Save Your Life ? ? If you often feel angry and overwhelmed, like the stress in your life is spinning out of control, then you may be hurting your heart. ? ? If you dont want to break your own heart, you need to learn to take charge of your life where you can — and recognize there are many things beyond your control. ? ? So says Dr. Robert S. Eliot, author of a new book titled From Stress to Strength: How to Lighten Your Load and Save Your Life. Hes a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska. ? ? Eliot says there are people in this world whom he calls hot reactors. For these people, being tense may cause tremendous and rapid increases in their blood pressure. ? ? Eliot says researchers have found that stressed people have higher cholesterol levels, among other things. Weve done years of work in showing that excess alarm or stress chemicals can literally burst heart muscle fibers. When that happens it happens very quickly, within five minutes. It creates many short circuits, and that causes crazy heart rhythms. The heart beats like a bag of worms instead of a pump. And when that happens, we cant live. ? ? Eliot, 64, suffered a heart attack at age 44. He attributes some of the cause to stress. For years he was a hot reactor. On the exterior, he was cool, calm and collected but on the interior, stress was killing him. Hes now doing very well. ? ? The main predictors of destructive levels of stress are the FUD factors —? fear, uncertainty and doubt —? together with perceived lack of control, he says. ? ? For many people, the root of their stress is anger, and the trick is to find out where the anger is coming from. Does the anger come from a feeling that everything must be perfect? Eliot asks. ? ? Thats very common in professional women. They feel they have to be all things to all people and do it all perfectly. They think, I should, I must, I have to. Good enough is never good enough. Perfectionists cannot delegate. They