Stress Could Be Deadly to Your Brain and Heart- Discover How

In the modern times, health and sickness are pretty (easy to get to, use, or understand) subjects. Something as silly/extremely easy as a headache, if you dare to look it up on the internet, can be a first signal that your brain is about to haemorrhage in any given number of days to come.

The Internet is full of medical advice(read unsolicited medical advice blown way out of proportions at times.) However, you can gather some decent and useful bits if you choose smartly and land up at an informative site that holds its ground(think WebMD or similar ones)

Let’s assume that you did fall upon one or more legit and genuine pieces of medical information. Here is what you’ll end up concluding after you have taken the pain to do some extensive digging through all those web pages- Stress is a common resident of the vicinity of many diseases.

Chronic Stress Is Often Equal to Health Issues

Ever noticed how you just can’t stomach food before a big exam or a critical interview? You must know some people who start shaking if you ask them to address an audience, a condition also known as stage fright. Just remember how sleep evades you every time you have a big next day, an important meeting, your wedding, a child’s state finals, etc.

Stress affects many body systems. Some of these include your metabolism, immunity, digestion, and endocrine system. In fact, individual studies provide proof for the long-standing negative impacts of stress on the cardiovascular and neurological systems.

The Massachusetts and Mount Sinai Research and Its Results

Massachusetts General Hospital and School of Medicine at Mount Sinai contributed to research recently. The investigative affair was meant to uncover hard evidence that could link the presence of stress to the development of heart or brain related issues.

The researchers undertook two different studies. The first study involved 300 people. Their CT and PET scans were observed. A radiopharmaceutical was used, which happens to be useful when measuring arterial inflammation or brain activity. The second study involved 13 patients with PTSD. Similar scans were carried out for these 13, and their stress levels were analysed.

The investigation revealed a few significant observations. Higher stress levels were seen to increase the amygdala activities, thus enhancing the risk of a cardiovascular event, stroke for example. It also turned up in the study that the rate of growth of activity in the amygdala can be used to deduce the possible time frame of occurrence of a cardiac event. Also, increased brain activity was connected to an enhanced risk of arterial inflammation.

Reducing Stress Can Save You from Trouble

The research establishes a valid connection between high-stress levels and cardiovascular conditions. Every observation of the said study relates a particular degree of activity in the amygdala, a part of your brain, to a cardiac event.

Thus, deducing that high amygdala activity causes heart issues, it is entirely possible that reducing the same could result in reduced chances of a cardiovascular incidence. The research, in a way, heightens the significance of stress coping mechanisms.