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Hidden stress underlies heart attacks, study shows
Orlando, US, Nov 12: Stress you didn`t even know you had could kill you, US researchers have reported.
Orlando, US, Nov 12: Stress you didn't even know you had
could kill you, US researchers have reported.
They found people whose blood pressure rose during ''mental
stress'' were six times more likely to have a heart attack or other
severe heart event within six years than people who handled the
stress more calmly.
And it was not stress that people knew they were feeling -- pulse was not affected and their volunteers usually had no idea their blood pressure was spiking, the researchers told a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando yesterday.
''How do you learn to manage something when you don't know you have it?'' asked Diane Becker of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who led the study.
The mental stress reaction trumped everything else. Other risk factors such as smoking, having high cholesterol, diabetes or being a man paled in comparison, the researchers found.
''People with hyper-reactive blood pressure to mental stress were more than six times as likely to have a coronary heart disease event,'' they said.
They tested 295 siblings who were under 60 but already had some signs of coronary artery disease. They tested this with an angiograph, which measures the thickness of an artery.
Many had not known they had early signs of heart disease.
They gave them a stress test during which they measured pulse and blood pressure, and then watched them for six years.
An ''event'' was defined as a heart attack, severe chest pain known as angina or a 50 per cent or more blockage of an artery.
Hyper-reactive people were those in the upper 25 per cent of reaction, as defined by how much their blood pressure went up. The ''hot'' responders saw, on average, a 20 point rise in blood pressure during the stress test.
Bureau Report
And it was not stress that people knew they were feeling -- pulse was not affected and their volunteers usually had no idea their blood pressure was spiking, the researchers told a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando yesterday.
''How do you learn to manage something when you don't know you have it?'' asked Diane Becker of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who led the study.
The mental stress reaction trumped everything else. Other risk factors such as smoking, having high cholesterol, diabetes or being a man paled in comparison, the researchers found.
''People with hyper-reactive blood pressure to mental stress were more than six times as likely to have a coronary heart disease event,'' they said.
They tested 295 siblings who were under 60 but already had some signs of coronary artery disease. They tested this with an angiograph, which measures the thickness of an artery.
Many had not known they had early signs of heart disease.
They gave them a stress test during which they measured pulse and blood pressure, and then watched them for six years.
An ''event'' was defined as a heart attack, severe chest pain known as angina or a 50 per cent or more blockage of an artery.
Hyper-reactive people were those in the upper 25 per cent of reaction, as defined by how much their blood pressure went up. The ''hot'' responders saw, on average, a 20 point rise in blood pressure during the stress test.
Bureau Report