Stress & Heart Disease

We have all experienced stress at some point in our lives.  Most people experience stress every day.  It is often what gets us going in the mornings and gives us the motivation to do things.  Without stress, it would be quite an unproductive world that we live in.

Stress can be a good thing as just described above, and can occur when starting a new job, getting married, or going on a trip.  However, it can become a bad thing when the stress becomes prolonged and does not go away so you may begin to exhibit signs of stress.  This is when stress can become detrimental to your heart and blood vessels within your body.

Stress that lasts for a  long time contributes to increased cholesterol, hypertension (high blood pressure), and can increase the risk of clots.  Your heart works harder during times of stress as your pulse may also increase.  When working in the medical field, I commonly saw people come in with heart attacks after dealing with a stressful event for many months.  As a result, stress cannot be taken lightly.

What has always amazed me when working with people who are suffering a heart attack as a result of stress, is how many people do not recognize the symptoms of stress, and will admit to dealing with a difficult situation in their lives but did not realize that what they were feeling was stress.  However, when you start speaking to them, and describing the symptoms of stress, they then become aware that what they had been experiencing was stress.  I personally have been under a lot of stress in a past job, and I knew that if I did not get out of that position, that it would lead to my demise (maybe not right then, but over time it would have).

In the next post, I will describe the symptoms of stress and what you can do to control it.  Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to get rid of all forms of stress in our lives, but we can certainly learn to recognize it and control it before it gets the best of us.