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STRESS IS KNOWN TO BE BAD FOR THE HEART. | |
| Contact: Robert Soufer, M. D. Phone: 203-937-38882 Email: Robert.soufer@yale.edu Embargoed until: March 3, 2004 |
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Vancouver, BC, Canada - Stress is known to be bad for the heart. Researchers at Yale University are beginning to uncover what makes stress damaging, by looking at how the brain processes stressful situations. Findings from a series of studies conducted by Dr. Robert Soufer and his colleagues at Yale University School of Medicine were presented for the first time at the 63rd American Psychosomatic Society Annual Meeting, held March 2-5 in Vancouver, Canada. These studies, on the way that the brain influences and orchestrates the heart's reaction to stress, are shedding light on the "neuro-cardiac interaction". The contribution of stress and emotional factors such as anger to myocardial infarction-heart attack-has been well described. What's needed is a better understanding of how these factors are processed by the brain soas to cause heart problems-how to explain the link between stress and anger on the one hand, and heart attack on the other. Using state of the art positron emission tomography, or PET, along with standard echocardiography, Dr. Soufer's group was able to examine the brains and hearts of research subjects at the same time. The three studies presented show that mental stress is different from physical stress. In addition it showed that some of the effects of stress are due to the make-up of the individual: some people are more prone to stress and emotional effects than others. Lastly, it shed light on how men and women differ in the ways they handle stress. Over 100 patients with stable coronary disease were studied. Patients completed questionnaires measuring anger proneness. They then completed tasks in the laboratory, including a challenging mental arithmetic task during which they were told to go faster, and their frequent errors were corrected harshly. After completing these tasks, the patients were injected with dobutamine, a drug that allows cardiologists to test the heart's ability to do physical work. Throughout, their heart and brain function were measured, along with heart rate and blood pressure. Dr. Aseem Vashist compared periods of heart defects caused by the mental stress to periods of heart defects caused by the physical stress, finding that the mental stress provoked greater brain activity in regions that are important for information processing, memory and emotion, and the mobilization of the sympathetic nervous system; this was not seen during the physical stress. Dr. Matthew Burg looked at brain activity during the mental stress, comparing patients who scored high on the anger questionnaires to patients who scored low on them. The patterns of brain activity he found showed that the high anger patients experienced the task as more challenging and more unpleasant, independent of how well they did. This indicates that the high anger people are likely to experience any stress as more challenging, unable to distinguish what is important from what is not. Comparing men to women Dr. Robert Soufer found pronounced differences. Women are more likely to use both sides of their brain during stress, while also showing an overall different pattern of activity in memory, cognitive, and emotional centers. This may indicate that for women, the same stress is qualitatively different than it is for men, and the affects on the heart may also therefore differ. Each of these studies showed large differences in emotion, memory, and information processing areas, says Dr. Soufer. A next step may be to look at how stress reduction treatments alter the brain activity during mentally stressful tasks, and whether this results in a reduced affect on the heart. | |
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Psychosomatic Medicine is the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Psychosomatic Society, published bimonthly. For information about the journal, contact Vicki White, Managing Editor for Manuscript Production,
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