The body is designed to respond to emergencies by “turning on” the stress response. This can be good, if your body returns to normal afterward. But in today's society, we tend to turn on and stay on.
This is chronic stress, and it can help promote clogging of the arteries with cholesterol. Then, when clogging is advanced, a sudden acute bout of stress can push us over the edge into a heart attack.
Relentless worry, trying to do too much in too little time, etc., can stimulate the body's emergency system — the sympathetic nervous system. Lots of things happen, but two are of major importance.
One is an increase in blood pressure, which increases wear and tear in the arteries. Too high for too long can damage the delicate lining of arteries, opening the door for cholesterol deposits.
The other is that more cholesterol in the bloodstream means more can be deposited, and sympathetic nervous system stimulation causes increased cholesterol production. Since the vast majority of cholesterol in the blood is produced in your liver, this is an important effect.
Here's how it works. When stressed, the body believes it needs more fuel to respond. Fats are mobilized from the abdominal region and dumped into the bloodstream and passed through the liver. Since some of the stored fat is in the form of saturated fat, it can interfere with the liver's feedback system, causing it to overproduce cholesterol. This is just one of many reasons why dietary saturated fat and excess abdominal fat stores are big health risks.
Clogging and spasms
Over time, the arteries become clogged with excess cholesterol. The process is called atherosclerosis. For quite a while, the cholesterol plaques are mushy and the process can be reversed. Eventually, however, calcium invades the plaques, and they harden; thus the term hardening of the arteries.
In the mushy stage, if you experience an acute bout of stress, it could trigger a heart attack. Here's why: When stressed, the blood clots more easily, and formation of a blood clot in a severely clogged area of an artery could shut it down completely. This would deny blood flow and oxygen to everything downstream, killing tissue within hours.
Severe stress also could cause the artery to spasm (constrict violently), causing it to break open and release the contents inside. These contents strongly promote clotting, making the situation much worse.
So chronic stress can set the stage for disaster, and a bout of acute stress can help make the disaster a reality.
Widespread damage
Beyond heart attacks, the incidence and severity of cancer and diabetes have been linked to stress. Stress can affect the immune system, hyping allergic reactions and triggering autoimmune responses.
Stress causes muscles to contract, and chronic contractions can lead to pain in the neck, lower back and elsewhere.
Recent research is looking at the effect of chronic stress on the brain, and many implications are surfacing. Stress could cause some regions of the brain to atrophy (waste away). It's hard to tell if this can be reversed. It may cause decreased short-term memory and reasoning ability.
In addition, stress may cause changes in the DNA, our body's genetic coding system. Damage to DNA could interfere with cell growth, accelerating the aging process.
Chronic stress is a bad thing that takes a huge toll on the quality of human life, especially in the United States. And, adding insult to injury, evidence is mounting that stress helps make us fatter.
Bryant Stamford is professor and chairman of the department of exercise science at Hanover College. To contact him, go to his Web site, professorstamford.com. Or write to “The Body Shop,” The Courier-Journal, P.O. Box 740031, Louisville, KY 40201-7431.
source: courier-journal.com
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