Emotional Stress Alters Heart Function, Ups Heart Disease Risk
By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Medical News
Sept. 20, 2007 — Here’s a health fact most of us understand better than our doctors do: Emotional stress really can harm our hearts.
Intense grief, acute anger, and sudden fear can have direct — sometimes fatal — effects on the human heart. And long-term emotional stress shortens lives by increasing the risk of heart disease, notes Daniel J. Brotman, MD, director of the hospitalist program at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore.
"What is intuitive to people is not necessarily intuitive to physicians," Brotman tells WebMD. "Emotional stress, conceptually, is the same thing for cardiovascular risk as physical stress. But a lot of doctors blow that off, because they think emotional stress is a psychological problem, not a physical problem."
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