Can stress cause heart attack ?

Emotional stress can affect a person’s health in numerous ways. It can increase the risk of chronic heart disease and can even trigger an acute heart attack. Adrenaline surge can accompany any situation but when it turns stressful, it affects our health. Adrenaline and cortisol are known as stress hormones and a sudden surge in them can harm our health.

Stress affects people in different ways as they tend to respond to different situations in different ways. One person may find a situation joyful while the other person may find the situation stressful and miserable. Sometimes, people may release the stress through emotions such as anger, moodiness, anxiety etc.

Causes of Stress

● Work overload
● Starting a new job
● Relationship issues
● Illness
● Retirement
● Death of a loved one

There can be many other factors which may cause stress but the above given factors can be common for most of the people.
Tips to help reduce stress

Let’s find out few methods which can help reduce our stress.

● Maintain Proper Diet: Some people tend to eat and drink in excessive amounts when they are too stressed out. Keep a track of food and water consumption.

● Follow a Fitness Regime: Sitting like a couch potato thinking of the factors which can cause stress may make you obese which can lead to many diseases. Follow a workout regime and do proper exercise to make sure that you stay physically fit
● Meditation: Meditation can help you flush out all your thoughts and helps you to relax. It can actually open up different perspectives to solve a matter regarding which you are stressed about

● Nurturing: Nurturing means taking proper care of yourselves. If you are stressed out due to a major problem which affects you, there are chances that until you solve the issue, you may not even take care of yourself. This includes your health, personal hygiene, food habits and so on
● Avoid holiday stress triggers: Even if you are on a holiday, some factors may trigger stress on you which is not good for your health. Simple examples can be delay in transportation, missing to visit some important destinations and so on

● Reduce the causes of stress: You may know that some factors may act as triggers to your stress. Try to avoid facing such situations or those factors. Especially, when it comes to office work, effective time management, submission of work sticking to the deadline etc can cause stress. Avoid procrastination of work and try to finish the work at the earliest to avoid a stressful situation

Hence, protect your heart health by reducing stressing out!

Dr Alla Gopala Krishna Gokhale

Cardiothoracic, Transplant and Minimal Access Cardiac Surgeon 

Apollo Hospitals, Jubilee hills, Hyderabad.