Valentine’s Day is Good for Your Sweetheart and Your Heart (2024)
Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to show affection or celebrate romance with cards, flowers, and candy. It’s a good day for sweethearts, but it can also be a reminder of how expressions of love and caring may benefit the body. Research suggests that physical demonstrations of affection can improve some health factors and reduce the risk of heart disease.
The Human Touch
Research shows that being touched or touching someone can activate areas of the brain that control empathy, emotions, and certain social behaviors. Health experts believe that touch helps communicate a sense of connection and strengthens positive emotions that enhance family, friendly, and romantic relationships. Research also shows that these positive aspects of relationships contribute to, and may even form a foundation for, good physical health.
Hugging, touching, kissing, and sexual activity can boost levels of oxytocin, a hormone that causes relaxation and calmness. Research suggests that this bodily chemical has many heart-related health benefits, including the ability to: • Lower blood pressure and heart rate • Decrease stress by lowering levels of cortisol, a chemical known as the “stress hormone” • Reduce inflammation in heart tissue and possibly repair cells in the heart muscle • Improve your sleep cycle
Pain Relief is Stress Relief
In general, prolonged pain can have harmful effects on the heart and circulatory system. If chronic pain isn’t managed, it can damage heart tissue and blood vessels. Sudden surges of pain release adrenalin, a hormone that increases heart rate and blood pressure. The good news is that the touch of a loved one – holding hands, for example – can reduce the sensation of pain, research suggests. Touch also can reduce anxiety and stress caused by injury or chronic pain.
Helping Others Helps You
There’s research to support the expression, “A helping heart is a healthy heart.” Some studies suggest that doing volunteer work can reduce depression and elevate moods, possibly because such work helps create bonds with others. Volunteer work also has been linked to longer life. People who suffer from chronic illness also may feel less pain when helping others.
Your Four-Legged Valentine
Pet owners understand that there’s no need for cards and candy to share love with their furry friends. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), studies show that the bond between people and their pets is linked to health benefits such as lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels, and decreased feelings of loneliness and anxiety.
In This Together
Touching and hugs can remind the brain of familiar feelings of comfort and affection, for both the giver and the receiver. Among couples, this can lead to stronger bonds and more positive emotions. Studies show that couples who share higher levels of connection tend to make more heart-healthy choices and engage in healthier behaviors.
Valentine's Day is an opportunity to show affection or celebrate romance with cards, flowers, and candy. It's a good day for sweethearts, but it can also be a reminder of how expressions of love and caring may benefit the body.
While the date is meant to honor Saint Valentine's death and burial, which supposedly occurred in mid-February around 270 AD, some historians believe the date could reflect the Catholic Church's attempt to replace the ancient Pagan celebration of Lupercalia — a fertility festival for the pagan agricultural god Faunus — ...
The heart shape is associated with love because it has long been considered the symbol of the human heart. The heart is the organ that pumps blood throughout the body, but it is also believed to be the seat of emotions and feelings.
You may hold my hand for a while, but you hold my heart forever. I love you more than coffee. Thank you for being mine. You make me feel like the heart-eye emoji.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8: Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
That we may rejoice and be glad all our days.O God of Love, blessed are we,bearing in our hearts a deep desire to love,understanding full well how we fall short.
Another common legend states that St.Valentine defied the emperor's orders and secretly married couples to spare the husbands from war. It is for this reason that his feast day is associated with love.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
This Saint Valentine wore a ring with a Cupid on it—a symbol of love—that helped soldiers recognize him. And, in a precursor to greeting cards, he handed out paper hearts to remind Christians of their love for God. Because of this legend, Saint Valentine became known as the patron saint of love.
It originated as a Christian feast day honoring a martyr named Valentine, and through later folk traditions it has also become a significant cultural, religious and commercial celebration of romance and love in many regions of the world.
Research suggests that celebrating Valentine's Day can have positive effects on relationships. Couples often use the occasion as a catalyst for communication, reflection, and intimacy, strengthening their bonds and creating lasting memories together.
Turns out, it was a pretty common name during Late Antiquity. As far as anyone can tell, the Saint Valentine of Valentine's Day was one of two guys preaching the good word in Rome in the third century. One of these two was martyred on February 14th 269, thus giving us the date for his eponymous day.
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