A study published in The Daily Telegraph states that high levels of stress or anxiety can increase a person's risk of fatal stroke or heart attack. The researchers of this study pooled data from 68,000 adults in England, and they looked at how their psychological distress affected their risk of death due to heart attacks, cancer, and stroke. All the participants that they have pooled were followed for eight years.
The symptoms of stress
Some of the symptoms of stress include:
- depression
- social problems
- anxiety
- loss of confidence
- fatigue
- burnout
Previous studies found links between stress and serious conditions. The researchers of this study were surprised to find out that even mild feelings of stress also lead to an increased risk of stroke or heart attack. Only those with high levels of stress were at risk of developing cancer, and it could be their cause of death.
How overthinking is linked to stress.
Overthinking is one of the causes of stress. When you replay a scenario over and over again in your mind, you are relieving the stress that you have already experienced. Overthinking can also change your mood and can make you feel sad or angry, and these feelings are not good for your health, and these feelings can eventually develop into depression and anxiety. Experts say that it is better to replace the thought instead of thinking about a bad scenario repeatedly.
Stress can take a toll not only on your mental health but your physical health as well. The researchers theorized that there might be a connection between stress and physical disease. Acute feelings can reduce the flow of blood to your heart, and depression can lead to increased levels of inflammation inside your body.
Further research is needed to know whether reducing stress could reduce the risk of early death. Stress is just one of the factors that can contribute to stroke, heart disease, and cancer, but there is also physical health that needs to be considered.
This whole study was carried out by the researchers from The Scottish Dementia Clinical Research Network. What stood out was the accurate representation of the link between stress and early death as the researchers used GHQ-12 or General Health Questionnaire, which covered the following symptoms:
- anxiety
- social dysfunction
- depression
- loss of confidence
These were then given to participants who have no symptoms, have a low level of symptoms, have a moderate level of symptoms, and those that have a high level of symptoms.
The causes of death were known through death certificates, and the researchers were interested in deaths from cancer, external causes like injury, accidents, and intentional self-harm and cardiovascular causes. This risk of early death in the participants with psychological symptoms and high levels of stress was compared with the participants with no symptoms at all.
The study took into account the participant's gender, age, alcohol consumption, type of occupation, BMI or body mass index, blood pressure, smoking habits, and their diabetes status.
The researchers of the study also carried out an analysis where they excluded those who died in the first five years of the research because they wanted to make sure that they were not including those who were already sick when their stress was measured.
