ANGER AND STROKE
Could a fit of anger or a wave of sadness cause someone to have a stroke right then and there?
New research says, yes, it can happen.
Perhaps this is a message on the importance of stress reduction. The mind-body connection is a very real one: the brain can trigger the release of hormones and chemicals throughout the body. In this case, it may be things like adrenaline surges during stressful situations that causes cardiovascular events, like strokes and heart attacks.
Could a fit of anger or a wave of sadness cause someone to have a stroke right then and there? New research says, yes, it can happen.
Perhaps this is a message on the importance of stress reduction. The mind-body connection is a very real one: the brain can trigger the release of hormones and chemicals throughout the body. In this case, it may be things like adrenaline surges during stressful situations that causes cardiovascular events, like strokes and heart attacks.
Two years ago, Ron O’Neal, who was just 35 at the time, suffered a stroke. “I was at work and I got aggravated. When I got off in the morning, I was on my way driving home and then my entire right side just went numb. Good thing I was stopped at a stop light. It was like 3 blocks from the house and I picked up my cell phone and called 911. It impacted my life a lot, because I used to run around in the street with my son, playing football with him, I don’t do that anymore,” says Ron.
Did stress on the job trigger the stroke? New research says, yes, it’s entirely possible it did. That’s according to a study of stroke patients published in the journal Neurology.
Almost thirty percent of patients reported exposure to anger, fear, irritability, or nervousness, or had sudden changes in body position in response to a startling event during the two hours just before the stroke.
Dr. Richard Libman, Chief of Cerebrovascular Disease and Stroke at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, says, “The chemicals that are released during certain emotional states including anger might conceivably change your blood vessels and perhaps even make blood vessels constrict or become narrower.” Chemicals like adrenaline surges during stress. So does this mean we need to aggressively get rid of stress in society? “It’s more of a matter on how someone reacts to the stress rather, as opposed to the concept of getting rid of the stress completely which is probably impossible,” states Dr. Libman.
If stress triggers hormones like adrenaline, can medicines, like the beta blocker family, which blocks these hormones, help prevent stroke? Or, would antidepressants or antianxiety medicines do the trick where exercise and yoga fail?
“Right now until we have more data you just have to use common sense and your instinct and say anybody, whether you’re a physician or a lay person, in New York or any other place, that probably treating physiological or emotional stress, managing it, by some of the techniques that we talked about before, whether be stress management, medication, physiotherapy etc, can conceivably reduce the risk of stroke,” Dr. Libman states.
The authors say the main modifiable risk factors for stroke are high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol and obesity. However, this study demonstrates that there are factors that may trigger the premature onset of stroke and this is an area of active research.
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