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Stress and Heart Disease: Part 1

Summary & Participants

We've all experienced stress at one time or another. Your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure rises, and every part of your body tenses up. It has been linked to a variety of health conditions, but one of the most significant effects is the damage it can do to your heart. Not only is stress dangerous for people with heart disease, it can also increase the risk of heart complications. Join our panel of experts as they discuss the relationship between stress and heart disease, and share some helpful stress reduction techniques.

Medically Reviewed On: July 11, 2008

Webcast Transcript

LISA CLARK: I'm Lisa Clark. Welcome, and thank you for joining us for this webcast. If you are one of the millions of Americans diagnosed with heart disease, you can turn to your doctors for help, change your diet to help, and take prescription drugs or nutritional supplements to help. But there's one more weapon in your arsenal against heart disease, and it's all in your mind. Learning how to recognize and reduce stress is an important tool in reducing your risk of heart disease. For the next few moments, we'll discuss ways to help you do just that.

Joining us for this discussion, Nate Lebowitz, a cardiologist and assistant clinical professor at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Welcome, Nate. Also joining us, Sam Benjamin. He's the director for the Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is also one of the founders of Mariposa, which is a natural supplement company. Thank you, Sam, for joining us.

We all talk about being stressed. But what is it exactly? How is it measured? And what does it do to your heart?

NATE LEBOWITZ, MD: There's clear evidence that people who are the so-called Type-A personality, and that's not a general thing. That's not somebody who's just under stress. There are specific indicators of what is a Type-A personality, some of which are perfectionism, time pressure, and a number of other things. But people who are Type-A personality, clearly are at much higher risk of developing coronary heart disease. We've found that the mind plays a powerful role in the coronary arteries, and in the rhythms of the heart as well.

LISA CLARK: There's something that your body releases when you are in a state of stress.

NATE LEBOWITZ, MD: It's actually adrenaline, or nor-epinephrine and epinephrine. These are the fight or flight hormones, and they are adaptive for when we had to run away from dinosaurs. Not that we ever coexisted with dinosaurs.

LISA CLARK: You'll be getting calls on that one.

NATE LEBOWITZ, MD: Don't call me. But they also speed up the heart rate, increase the blood pressure, constrict the arteries. And, clearly, in animal models, animals that are under chronic physiologic stress develop heart disease.

SAM BENJAMIN, MD: One of the other things that they do is, the effect on the immune system, not just from the adrenal gland, but from many different parts of immunity, that we're now learning are in many different parts of the body. That's really important, because one of the possibilities of some kinds of heart disease, may relate to immune system dysfunction, and even the possibility that certain bacteria increase the amount of disease. So stress can make a difference in an enormous number of different ways.

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