Dr Anna Rolleston The Cardiac Clinic

I spend many hours out and about talking to people about looking after their health and especially their hearts.

Most of the time we get talking about stress and the negative impact that even low level, long term stress has on our bodies. Well I've certainly had to take some of my own medicine over the past few weeks as we have moved our clinic into a brand new premise and trying to keep working as well as manage moving has been an ordeal to say the least! Stress in high levels has been following me around. I am grateful that I have got such an amazing group of work colleagues and an awesome family who make the hard times easy. Thank you!

So the point, you ask? We have moved! And we have joined forces with others to create the Manawaora Integrative Health and Research Centre. The Manawaora centre is a place where the practitioners who run their businesses will endeavour to work in an integrative manner for the good of their clients. This isn't really a new concept but it is pretty new for Tauranga. We are certainly still feeling our way through the ins and outs of exactly how that works – having only been in our new place for two weeks, but we're all very excited about the prospect of providing better care and better service for our respective clients by applying an integrative approach. Joining The Cardiac Clinic at the Manawaora Centre are Desiree DeSpong of Aetiology, Roger Athy-Knibbs of Salveo Physio, Kristin Borchardt of The Yoga Collective and Crystal Urban a US qualified naturopathic doctor who runs Holistic Health Consultants.

They say that moving house, or in our case offices, can be one of the most stressful things you do in your life, along with divorce, and coping with the death of a loved one. Yes, I agree totally! However, short-term acute stress makes you feel and act differently so that it can be identified, usually by those around you and then you can take steps to manage it. On the flip side, low level, long term stress is difficult to identify yet can have wide reaching health effects. The more you understand what stress means to you, how it affects you and how you can manage it the better your health and your ability to manage stressful situations.