Mental stress can be a silent killer, particularly in postmenopausal women, according to Dr. Noel Bairey, medical director of the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Bairey, a cardiologist, studied cardiac function in 100 heart disease patients in the lab and 350 other patients during an electronically monitored 24-hour period of their normal lives. She found that for three of four patients, mental stress caused surges in heart rate and blood pressure, and a drop in oxygen supply to the heart that is a precursor to heart attack. Among her findings:
– Postmenopausal women demonstrate dramatically enhanced blood pressure reactivity, compared to premenopausal women and men. Older women had stronger and more frequent surges in response to mental stress.
Women classified as ”hostile” according to a personality test were more likely than men to suffer from reduced oxygen to the heart when stressed in their daily lives. Hostility does not cause of heart disease, she said, but for heart disease patients, hostility triggers periods of heart dysfunction that can lead to heart attack.
Most subjects reported no discomfort, she said; thus a silent disease process is triggered by mental activity. Her advice to women with heart disease is to work with their physicians to modify risk factors such as weight, diet and blood pressure.
