Stress can lead to cardiovascular diseases
Unfortunately, long term and extreme episodes of stress and depression can lead to severe cardiovascular diseases or even heart attacks or strokes, because stress releases adrenaline which accelerates your heart rate and blood pressure. That is why having too much stress for a long time is bad for your heart health. Thus, it is crucial to find out your stressors and try to stay calm and safe.
Also, it is very important the way you handle the stress because if you respond to it by smoking and drinking alcohol, eating unhealthy foods or being sedentary you will also increase the risk of heart disease. If you feel like you can’t get over stress episodes, you can call a psychologist for help and you should know that online therapies work well these days.
“When stress is excessive, it can contribute to everything from high blood pressure, also called hypertension, to asthma to ulcers to irritable bowel syndrome,” said Ernesto L. Schiffrin, M.D., Ph.D., physician-in-chief at Sir Mortimer B. Davis-Jewish General Hospital.
“The link between stress and increased risk of developing heart disease has previously focused on the lifestyle habits people take up when they feel stressed such as smoking, drinking too much alcohol and overeating.
“Exploring the brain’s management of stress and discovering why it increases the risk of heart disease will allow us to develop new ways of managing chronic psychological stress. This could lead to ensuring that patients who are at risk are routinely screened and that their stress is managed effectively,” said Emily Reeve, Senior Cardiac Nurse at the British Heart Foundation.
