Stress and Heart Disease

Q: I'm facing a lot of stress right now. How much of a role does stress play in heart disease?

A: Increasing evidence suggests a relationship between the risk of cardiovascular disease and environmental and psychosocial factors such as job stress, social isolation, and personality traits. All people feel stress, but they feel it in different amounts and react to it in different ways.

However, we don’t yet fully understand how stress contributes to heart-disease risk or if reducing stress can lower the risk. Stress may affect behaviors such as smoking, physical inactivity, and overeating. We also know that the surge in adrenaline caused by severe emotional stress causes the blood to clot more readily, increasing the risk of heart attacks. Whether or not stress turns out to be a major risk factor, learning stress management is risk-free. Thus, there seems to be little reason not to recommend some form of stress management in people with heart disease or with risk factors for heart disease.  

Jennifer H. Mieres, M.D., is director of nuclear cardiology and associate professor of clinical medicine at New York University. She’s also a spokesperson for the American Heart Association.