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Health January 2013

Aid for Age

Heart Stoppers All — Stress, Fear and High Blood Pressure

By Tait Trussell

When your brain believes there is some threat, this response activates the nervous system, which rushes adrenaline and other chemicals to the body. This increases a person’s blood pressure and heart rate. For someone with high blood pressure, the danger of heart failure increases.

ps_trussellOne third of Americans over age 65 have high blood pressure. Close to half of Americans with too-high blood pressure — most of them seniors — don’t have it under control.

Those who are trying to lower their blood pressure are taking medicine for the problem, eating a healthy, low-sodium diet, exercising, keeping their weight down, and not smoking or drinking much booze.

Many with high blood pressure — hypertension is another name for it — aren’t even aware that they have high blood pressure. But if your systolic (the upper number) is 140 or higher and the diastolic (lower figure) is 90 or more, you’d better check with your doctor.

The danger of hypertension is that the pressure could bring on a stroke or a heart attack, which could end your life.

The information above comes from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). When your blood pressure is too high, you are four times more likely to die from a stroke and three times more likely to keel over with heart disease.

The heart is a powerful organ. It pumps well over a gallon of blood every minute; an incredible 700,000 gallons of blood flows through your body each year. But the heart can be fragile as well. And it can be subject to strange events.

For instance, I was reading recently about one frightening peculiarity affecting the heart. The heart really can stop from pure fright. It is an uncommon event, but it is real. I read that doctors around the world are identifying this extreme occasion, even in relatively healthy people.

You have people in acute, sudden heart failure who seemed perfectly healthy. Doctors have named it the “broken heart syndrome” when it has occurred in persons who have lost their spouse.

This is not necessarily connected with blood pressure; but a senior with high blood pressure whose arteries are caked with plaque could be more subject to a death-dealing fright instance.

Dr. Martin A. Samuels, chairman of the neurology department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, has gathered together hundreds of reports of cases where people have died suddenly in frightening situations.

These who suddenly die are victims, for example, of household break-ins, even when the robbers have not even touched them. Included also are people who have been mugged.

Elderly persons who have been in an auto accident, even if they were only slightly injured, have suddenly died — apparently just because of the shock of the event.

Also documented has been an increase in sudden deaths in the 1994 earthquake in California, and the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack in New York City.

Dr. Samuels explains that the underlying factor is that the nervous system controls the heart. A sudden heart malfunction can be set off by a surge of stress hormones.

When your brain believes there is some threat, this response activates the nervous system, which rushes adrenaline and other chemicals to the body. This increases a person’s blood pressure and heart rate. For someone with high blood pressure, the danger of heart failure increases.

Usually, your body will take an adrenaline rush in stride. It is what brings on the “fight or flight” condition that has saved the lives of humankind through the ages.

An excessive stress response, says Dr. Samuels, can damage the cardiovascular system in different ways. In those who are already at risk, fear can cause a classic heart attack.

Someone “who has a 50 percent narrowing of the arteries… may never have symptoms.” But if they narrowly miss having an auto accident, “their adrenaline level can rise and destabilize that plaque. This can cause a blood clot that would totally block the artery.”

Doctors who have studied this phenomenon say that stress brought on by watching an exciting sports event can even bring on a heart attack. Football games that reach a nail-biting excitement, with a tie score and two minutes to play, may well fall into that heart-straining category — although it’s certainly not going to stop people from watching football.

Estimates have been made that one percent of men and 7 percent of women with suspected heart attacks, which are normally caused by blocked arteries, have stress cardiomyopathy instead—a heart weakened by “broken heart syndrome.”

 

Tait Trussell is an old guy and fourth-generation professional journalist who writes extensively about aging issues among a myriad of diverse topics.

Meet Tait