4 Emotional Reactions That Increase The Risk Of Myocardial Infarction

Strong emotional reactions alone cannot cause a heart attack or other cardiovascular problems in a healthy person, but they can pose a risk

It is said that it is not the adversities of life that make us suffer, but our attitude towards them. Emotional reactions can also increase the risk of a heart attack.

It’s pretty obvious. If you think that nothing will work, you will feel so bad that you will not do anything to avoid a negative outcome.

But mostly  we are not aware that negative emotional reactions can  also have far-reaching consequences for our health.

For years medicine has ignored the power of the mind and its influence on many physical illnesses. However, more and more new scientific evidence shows that  our emotions are often responsible for the course and healing of various diseases. 

Specifically, we will report on heart diseases in this article. Coronary heart disease causes  40-50% of deaths in developed countries. 

In addition, two thirds of these deaths occur suddenly, meaning that nothing more can be done for the person concerned. Below we will now consider how our emotional responses can affect these diseases.

1. Tantrums increase the risk of heart attack

There are more and more studies that prove the phrase “ relax or you will have another heart attack ”  . In the event of an angry attack, the risk of a heart attack increases by up to 75% in the following hours.

Just as we always see it on TV and in the cinema, it is actually possible that a discussion can trigger a heart attack.

Indeed, a study conducted by the University of Sydney, Australia’s psychological researchers found that many people experienced symptoms such as muscle tension, loss of control and the feeling of having to explode before they had a heart attack .

This study identified what the main triggers for these sensations were:

• Family discussions: 29%
• Discussions with other people: 42%
• Job problems: 14%
• Traffic-related situations: 14%

2. Worry and fear are other triggers for a heart attack

Those who suffer from worry are also at a greater risk of heart attack, which can quickly turn into a trigger. In fact, the risk of a heart attack after an anxiety attack or a troubled time is even higher than after a tantrum.

This happens because there are changes in physical level that cause heartbeat and blood pressure to increase, blood vessels to harden, and to increase blood clotting.

All of these factors, we know, increase the risk of having a heart attack.

3. Hostility, another fundamental piece of the puzzle

As we have already explained, stress and negative emotions play  a far bigger role in heart disease than traditional causes such as cholesterol, age or high blood pressure.

In addition, the negative emotions can be both the reason and the consequence of a heart attack.

It seems that the hostility is related to the onset of the disease. But how exactly it affects the development of heart problems is not yet entirely clear. This inconsistency is related to the difficulty in differentiating the various components of the disease.

However, there are many theories about it. One of the best known is that cognitive aspects as well as cynicism, distrust along with anger, irritability and contempt are strongly related to the disease.

4. Does depression make the heart sick?

Furthermore, depression has long been associated with death from heart attack.

Probably this has to do with “fatigue” or, what is the same, with the feeling of exhaustion and loss of energy or vitality with a simultaneous increase in irritability and demoralization.

In fact, there are studies that show that fatigue alone can trigger a heart attack, even if depression and irritability are already under control.  But still, even these together can be responsible for a heart attack without fatigue.

But it is also clear that intense, emotional reactions alone cannot trigger a heart attack or other heart problems in a healthy person.

Nevertheless, when risk factors such as obesity, arteriosclerosis or high blood pressure accumulate, the emotional reactions can act as triggers.

If it is normal for you to have chronic anxiety and constant anger attacks, and you are generally an aggressive and hostile person, these moods can easily trigger heart disease.

dilemma

This shows that the typical egg and chicken dilemma is present here; what first exists? The truth is that both directions are possible and this is also the interesting thing that we want to emphasize here in this article.

We need to control our emotions and try to keep them from becoming too strong, intense, or habitual so that they cannot harm us.

However, it becomes clear that these 4 states of mind play an important role in our health. A healthy lifestyle not only means eating healthy and getting enough exercise, but also keeping our mental state in balance.  

This means learning how to control anger and hostility, using relaxation techniques to improve our anxiety, and how to treat depression, all of which will help us improve our quality of life.