How stress is destroying you

Nowadays we see a lot of case reports of sudden cardiac arrests in young patients. These could be due to two reasons, one is inherited and other is acquired. While the former could be due to hypertropic cardiomyopathy or long QT syndrome, the latter is the most common reason for cardiac arrest we see in practice. It occurs due to clotting of blood in the vessels supplying to heart.

Heart attack in young patients happens when there is clustering of risk factors like excessive stress, smoking, physical inactivity and the risk is multiplied if associated with abnormal cholesterols, high blood pressure or diabetes.

Having too much stress, for too long, is bad in general, but fatal for heart. Healthy employees exposed to excessive work stress had higher inflammation levels like hsCRP and "faced twice the risk of cardiovascular disease” in some of the epidemiological studies.

Stress leads to increase in stress hormones and exposure in long term leads to high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterols and an increased clotting tendency. These factors if not controlled lead to chronic heart problems.

Sudden stress can lead to erosion of the smooth covering layer inside the coronary artery called enodthelium, which exposes raw/denuded artery lumen to blood and leads to clotting which leads to blocking of the flow which leads to “heart attack”.

The way stress is handled matters. People often respond to it by smoking, overeating, or not exercising -- that increases the risk of heart attack /Cardiac Arrest. Changing lifestyle in a positive way in form of a positive attitude, balanced diet, regular physical activity and learning relaxation techniques and practicing yoga would help in the long term. (The writer is Sr Consultant Cardiologist, Citizens Specialty Hospital, Hyderabad.)

By Dr M Gokul Reddy