Heart Health: How Does Stress Affect Your Heart?

How Does Stress Affect the Heart?

While there are various ways to support and improve your heart health, there is one that will always reign supreme. Stress can run havoc on your health.

When it comes to stress, we all need a little from time to time. But like everything else in life, too much of it can be devastating.

During periods of stress, our heart rate naturally speeds up. The purpose of increasing your heart rate is to boost circulation throughout the body.

This allows the body to get the necessary nutrients to its desired destinations. In addition, stress naturally heightens our senses.

Doing so allows us to identify any possible threat and get away from it if needed.

When enough becomes too much, our bodies start to come undone. Think of it like having the “A team” pull back-to-back shifts.

Eventually, they will begin to miss things and become too tired to get things done. The longer we are exposed to stress, the more teams get pulled in and overworked.

All the while, your poor heart can’t call in backup. Stress has become a daily constant for most if not all of us. While our stressors may have changed from wild animals to looming deadlines.

The unfortunate reality is that, while those deadlines may not seem as life-threatening as a bear, they are something that follows us indefinitely.

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Types of Stress and the Effects

Emotional and physical stresses harm the heart and the vascular system. Acute stress happens all at once; chronic stress occurs over a more extended time period.

Stress hormones (catecholamines, including epinephrine, also known as adrenaline) have damaging effects if the heart is exposed to elevated catecholamine levels for a long time.

Stress can cause increased oxygen demand on the body, spasms of the coronary (heart) blood vessels, and electrical instability in the heart's conduction system.

In addition, chronic stress has been shown to increase the heart rate and blood pressure, making the heart work harder to produce the blood flow needed for bodily functions.

Long-term elevations in blood pressure, also seen with essential hypertension (high blood pressure not related to stress), are harmful and can lead to myocardial infarction (heart attack), heart failure, abnormal heart rhythms, and stroke.2

A stressful situation sets off a chain of events. Your body releases adrenaline, a hormone that temporarily causes your breathing and heart rate to speed up and your blood pressure to rise.

These reactions prepare you to deal with the situation — the “fight or flight” response. Chronic stress may lead to high blood pressure, increasing the risk for heart attack and stroke.

Your body’s response to stress is supposed to protect you. But, if it's constant, it can harm you. The hormone cortisol is released in response to stress.

Studies suggest that high cortisol levels from long-term stress can increase blood cholesterol, triglycerides, blood sugar, and blood pressure.

These are common risk factors for heart disease. This stress can also cause changes that promote the buildup of plaque deposits in the arteries.

Even minor stress can trigger heart problems like poor blood flow to the heart muscle. This is a condition where the heart doesn't get enough blood or oxygen.

And long-term stress can affect how the blood clots. This makes the blood stickier and increases the risk of stroke.

People respond to stressful situations differently. Some react strongly to a problem. Others are relaxed and unconcerned.

Luckily, you can decrease the effect of stress on your body. Try to identify and eliminate unnecessary mental stressors in your life and focus on the things that are actionable and in your control as opposed to things you cannot affect.

Make sure to also take care of key physical aspects that can help balance and soothe your biochemistry. Things like exercise, diet, supplementation, sleep, and relaxation.

Key things within your control: