Good morning, and welcome. I hope you had time for some breakfast ... it's a bit of an early start! Today I'm going to talk about the relationship between stress and cardiovascular disease. And since the medical profession is considered to be one of the most stressful careers you can have, this is something that we can be concerned about on a personal level as well as a professional one. But don't worry too much of course – we don't want to be even more stressed than we already are!
While there is plenty of evidence to suggest that stress in animals is related to cardiovascular problems, it is much more difficult to demonstrate the relationship in humans. This is because it is easy to expose groups of animals to different stressors and show that this has the effect of significantly increasing the incidence of cardiovascular problems. However, in humans, it is much more difficult to isolate stressors in a person's life, and as a result it is difficult to prove scientifically any causative link between stress and cardiovascular disease.
Despite this, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest a connection between stress and heart disease. And there are also some studies that have focused on heart attack patients which seem to show promising results for prevention of a second heart attack by using psychological therapies and stress-reduction techniques.
Stress also seems to be linked to high blood pressure and high levels of cholesterol, although, for the reasons I mentioned earlier, it is difficult to reliably establish this connection. And, since high blood pressure is a recognised risk factor for heart disease, if a link between stress and high blood pressure can be established we will have further evidence of the role stress plays in these diseases.
Even if a link cannot be established, either due to lack of evidence or because such a link does not in fact exist – something I find unlikely – there are still good reasons for working to help people lower their stress levels. With or without the presence of other illnesses, stress has a significant impact on quality of life and so is certainly an area worth addressing.
In summary, while it is difficult to prove the relationship between stress and cardiovascular disease, there is no shortage of circumstantial evidence. And not only does stress seem to increase the possibility of cardiovascular disease, it also has a negative effect on quality of life.