The Risk Of An Increase In Heart Disease In Men With Anxiety!
Anxiety is just your body’s natural response to stress but in some cases, it becomes intense and even brings a negative influence on your life. It is connected with several cardiometabolic conditions, including coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and even hypertension. And the cause of this connection however remains unclear.
The Risk Of An Increase In Heart Disease In Men With Anxiety!
From several studies, it has been proved that people with anxiety enhance cardiometabolic risk factors like abrupt increase in body mass intensity(BMI) as they grow older. And some other research suggests that failure in cardiometabolic health may moderately occur in the early stage of life of individuals with anxiety issues and will last till old age.
In a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA), some researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine made a team of scientists investigate the connection between cardiometabolic outcomes and symptoms of anxiety. And according to Lewina Lee, Ph.D., lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine, their findings from this study have shown that high levels of anxiety or worries in men are associated with the biological processes that can lead to heart disease and metabolic conditions, and these connections may appear much earlier in life than commonly recognized in childhood or adolescence.
Men tend to put off support of any kind because they believe they should be strong, self-reliant, able to manage their pain, and take the lead. This can make it difficult for men to admit that they have health problems, let alone affect their social and emotional well-being. On average, 1 in 8 men will experience depression and 1 in 5 will experience anxiety at some stage in their lives.
Men experience less anxiety and depression than women. They are also less likely to talk about it. This increases the risk that their anxiety or depression will not be recognized and treated. Untreated depression is a high-risk factor for suicide. About 3000 suicides occur each year in Australia. About 75% of those killed are men, with an average of nearly seven men dying every day. It’s important to remember that anxiety and depression are conditions, not weakness, and there are effective treatments.
The data for the study is collected by the researchers from the Normative Ageing Study, which the Department of Veterans Affairs established in the 1960s. A sample of 1,561 individuals was selected from an ongoing adult male group and each person has submitted assessments of seven cardiometabolic biomarkers every 3-5 years since 1975.
The average age of participants at the start of the study was 53 years. Between 1975 and 2015, they had an average of 6.6 cardiometabolic tests. During the same period, 1067 people died. Researchers noted that higher levels of neuroticism were associated with shorter educational attainment, higher family background of CHD, lower socioeconomic status, and higher levels of smoking and drinking.
After analyzing the data, the researchers found that participants who scored higher in neurosis had more high-risk cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors in all age groups. After adjusting for demographic factors, the scientists found that those with higher neuroticism were 13% more likely to have six or more risk factors for cardiovascular disease. They also found a connection between a higher anxiety level and a 10% higher risk of having six or more heart and metabolic disease risk factors. The scientists also say that the effects of anxiety on neurosis and heart metabolic health are similar to those of long-term heavy drinking.
Researchers explain their findings by noticing that anxiety may influence the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease through psychosocial, blogging, and behavioral pathways. According to Dr. Lee, anxiety-related psychosocial factors, such as an increased tendency to interpret neutral situations as stressful or to avoid uncomfortable situations, make anxious individuals less proficient in coping with stressors and more likely to have negative health effects of stress, sensitivity, and increase the disease risk factors.
The researchers concluded that individuals with more anxiety may experience poor cardiovascular health earlier than those with less anxiety, and these changes underlie a stable trajectory of increased risk as they age.
