Stress and Heart Disease: How you think, feel, and live affects your heart, says the Harvard Heart Letter
Stress hormones top the list. They constrict blood vessels, speed up the heartbeat, and make the heart and blood vessels especially reactive to further stress. Psychosocial factors have also been linked with factors that signal increased inflammation, which plays an important role in artery-clogging atherosclerosis. Psychosocial factors could also make people more or less likely to pick up habits that tip them toward heart disease or away from it.
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