Don't Stress Your Heart

Dr Deepesh Venkatraman explains how physical and emotional stress can increase the risk for heart disease

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Stress is a normal part of life but if not managed properly, it may take an ugly turn and lead to an emotional, psychological, and even physical problems. These include high blood pressure, heart disease and irregular heartbeat. Emotional stress has a strong link with the heart. If extreme emotions such as happiness, anger, fear or grief are not handled properly, it may increase the risk of a heart attack. An imbalanced state of emotions can cause a wide range of problems, ranging from chronic damage to acute emergencies as well.

Stress and health

We experience emotions when signals are processed at amygdala, a specialised center in the brain, which is a portion of limbic system. According to the recent The Lancet Report, at times of peak emotions be it extreme happiness, anger, fear or grief, this center triggers a cascade of events, beginning with stimulation of hypothalamus.

Hypothalamus is the highest center of the autonomic function, which is an automatic fight or flight trigger zone. It releases chemicals to prepare the body for a combat or escape from external virus and bacteria. It's otherwise also called a sympathetic over activity, which further results in increased heart rate helping the body get more blood in anticipation of increased energy requirement by muscles. The respiratory rate increases to help the oxygen supply.