Emotional #Stress Linked to Women’s #Heart Problems. By Janice Wood. Researchers have found that emotional stressors — such as those provoking anger — may cause changes in the nervous system that controls heart rate and trigger a type of coronary artery dysfunction that occurs more frequently in women than men. In men with coronary artery disease, the large arteries feeding the heart tend to become clogged by plaque, and these blockages are evident on coronary angiograms. Women, however, may have chest pain related to the heart being starved for oxygen but have no evidence of arterial obstruction, according to researchers at the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles. “Women who go to emergency rooms and cardiologists because they have chest pain often are told that their arteries are clear and their hearts are fine. But the reality is that women’s coronary artery disease tends to be different from men’s,” said C. Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., a professor of medicine and medical director of the center. “In women, the large arteries may remain clear, but the smaller branches that connect to the even-smaller capillaries lose their ability to widen. Whether the large arteries are blocked or the small arterioles don’t function correctly, the result is the same — the heart becomes starved for oxygen.” After finding that many women’s small arteries fail to function properly — a condition called coronary microvascular dysfunction — Merz and her colleagues set out to discover the cause or causes. “We know that women who have chest pain and reduced oxygen to the heart — in the absence of ‘male-pattern’ obstructive coronary artery disease — may experience microvascular dysfunction during times of emotional distress even though their heart rates stay relatively low. In this study, we evaluated the heart’s autonomic system — the nerve network that regulates heart rate,” said Puja K. Mehta, M.D., director of the Non-Invasive Vascular Function Research Lab at the Streisand center. Sixteen women diagnosed with coronary microvascular dysfunction participated, as did eight women of similar age and weight who did not have coronary microvascular dysfunction, said Mehta, the study’s first author. “We measured heart rate, blood pressure, and heart rate variability — alterations in the time from one beat to the next,” she said. “These were measured when the women were at rest and again when they were subjected to several types of mental stress using standardized tests for anger, performing mental arithmetic and having a cold pack placed on the forehead.” Both groups responded in the same way to the stressors, except when dealing with the emotional stress of anger, the researchers reported. In women with microvascular dysfunction, emotional stress appeared to increase sympathetic nerve stimulation, which is associated with the quickened heart rate of the fight-or-flight mechanism, and decreased parasympathetic nerve activity, which relaxes and slows the heart rate, according to the study’s findings. The results suggest the autonomic nervous system may be one pathway involved in microvascular dysfunction in women, according to Mehta. “More specifically, we hypothesize that emotional stress may trigger microvascular dysfunction and lead to heart attacks and other cardiac problems in women,” she said. She added that more research is needed to better understand this mechanism and identify others that might exist. Source: psychcentral/news/2014/03/14/emotional-stress-linked-to-womens-heart-problems/67089.html
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 16:00:01 +0000
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