Salon.com > Stress

Is stress as harmful as smoking?

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 22:34:00 +0000

It's a known fact that worry and stress are bad for your ticker, but scientists have finally quantified just how bad. An aggregate of six studies reveals that being stressed out can raise your risk of having a heart attack by 27%—which is the equivalent to smoking five cigarettes a day. Researchers say stress can cause high blood pressure and a 2.8 mmol/L increase in bad LDL cholesterol, which is double the cholesterol levels recommended for heart and stroke patients. This significantly affects the likelihood of a heart attack, as high blood pressure can cause blood vessels to harden and become more easily blocked, and high cholesterol makes the heart work harder to pump blood through narrowed blood vessels. High blood pressure is thought to contribute to 50% of all heart attacks and strokes. The link between stress and heart attacks was greater in older subjects, and was not influenced by gender. A recent study found that stress itself, like smoking, may also be addictive.

Don’t forget to breathe

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:41:00 +0000

Do your palms get sweaty as you’re about to make a public presentation? Does the thought of being judged make you jittery?

It’s called performance anxiety, and it bedevils many musicians. New research from Australia suggests a simple solution:

Breathe.

Specifically, breathe deeply, from your diaphragm, for a half-hour before stepping into the spotlight.

This easy exercise produced positive physiological results for a group of 46 musicians, impacting their heart rate in welcome ways. Furthermore, it left the most anxious among them reported feeling noticeably less tense.

Biofeedback? Not necessary, according to the University of Sydney research team led by psychologists Andrew Kemp and Ruth Wells. Deep breathing alone did the trick.

Why can’t some of us relax?

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:58:00 +0000

Fear, like fire, is our friend when it isn’t raging out of control. Awareness of a potential threat activates the famous fight-or-flight impulse, facilitating a quick response. Once we realize the fright was actually a false alarm—that wasn’t a burglar you heard downstairs, just the cat—we rapidly return to a state of repose.

But too often, people suffering from anxiety disorders fail to respond to the all-clear signal. This leaves them in an ongoing state of heightened tension, which—if it lasts long enough, or gets triggered often enough—can take a severe physical and mental toll. Why are some of us able to relax, while others stay on guard long after any danger has passed?

An answer that could point the way toward breakthrough therapies is emerging from complementary studies of humans and mice. But Ahmad Hariri, a neurobiologist at Duke University, crystallizes the idea with a different animal altogether. He refers to the amygdala, which has been called “the fear center of the brain,” as a sort of watchdog. “A watchdog responds reflexively to threat,” he notes. It’s up to its owner to say ‘That’s enough. I heard you bark. I checked it out. It’s okay.’”