Anxiety Disorders Found to Have Strong Link to Heart Problems
The connection between heart health and depression has a long history of documentation and supporting evidence, but new research suggests that anxiety disorders may also have a strong link to heart health, and actually increase the risk of heart attacks.
Analysis of medical records from U.S. veterans reveal the connection and add support to the wide body of evidence that suggests a definite mind-body connection when it comes to heart health, which is an important breakthrough for the medical community, namely the American Heart Association, which does not currently recognize depression or anxiety as being threats to healthy heart function. The AHA does, however, currently recommend depression screenings for patients with existing heart disease due to evidence linking depression to poorer heart patient prognosis.
The study, lead by Dr. Jeffrey F. Scherrer of the St. Louis VA Medical Center, analyzed the medical records of 97,000 veterans and found that those with documented anxiety disorders displayed a high risk of suffering a heart attack over the course of the next seven years than did vets with no history of anxiety-related disorders. The anxiety disorders included in the study were post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder and generalized anxiety. All were linked to heart health and threat of heart attack independently of depression, which has its own evidence to link it empirically to heart health.
Depression itself has long been connected to heart health, and much documentation and research has been done that establishes its effects upon the human heart. According to past research, depression may boost the activity of blood-clotting platelets, thus impairing blood flow to the heart, as well as altering the immune system and, in turn, the body’s nervous systems, which help the body deal with everyday stressors. Indirectly, depression may also cause patients to neglect their health by eating poorly and avoiding heart-healthy exercise, or to routinely take prescription medications to control high cholesterol or blood pressure. Anxiety is thought to negatively impact heart health in very similar ways.
Though the evidence in this study indicates a link between anxiety and heart attack risk, it is unclear whether treatment of mental disorders like depression and anxiety will actually cause a reversal of heart damage, minimize the risks of heart attack, or improve the prognosis of patients with heart problems and depression and/or anxiety disorders. Further research is needed to reveal the extent of this fascinating mind-body connection, the implications of which could revolutionize the concept of treating the body and mind as one.