September 13th, 2010 by admin

This is one of those stories in which science and common sense seem to overlap. It should not surprise us that anxiety may be a contributing factor to heart problems. We’ve seen all too many movies and TV plots where the victim gets all stressed and, clutching his or her chest, then falls over moaning, “My heart is finally giving up my ghost.” or words to that effect. Anyway, there’s new research suggesting the way people are treated if they have an anxiety disorder may change their chances of survival. So, before we continue, here’s a little challenge for you. Just what do you think the relationship is between anxiety and heart attacks?

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is increasingly severe worry without any specific cause. So, before you have a stroke or heart attack, the link is less clear. How are we to decide whether you have heart disease because you smoke, or are overweight, or have a poor level of health and never exercise, or have a general level of anxiety in your life? But once you have an “incident”, this will naturally give you a real health problem to worry about. To that extent, the GAD stops being generalized and becomes the entirely understandable fear of death from a further “incident”. Now there really is a choice to be made by the doctors treating you to decide what balance to strike in the treatment for the heart and the anxiety problems. But before the “incident”… Read the rest of this entry »