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People who experience a lot of stress do not necessarily have more unhealthy hearts, new research finds. How you react to stress is more important than the amount of stress you experience. While negative reactions to stress are known to trigger heart disease, some people cope better than others.
To investigate, researchers measured people’s heart-rate variability.
The results showed that it was the perception of the stressful events that predicted an unhealthier heart. Some people in the study experienced many more stressful events, but had healthier hearts at least partly because their attitude was better, the study suggests.
“These results tell us that a person’s perceptions and emotional reactions to stressful events are more important than exposure to stress per se. This adds to the evidence that minor hassles might pile up to influence health." said Dr Nancy L. Sin, the study’s first author.
Category(s):Stress Management
Source material from Psychosomatic Medicine
