Emotional rescue

Vegetarian Times, Feb, 2001 by Janet Webb

When it comes to risks for heart disease, our emotional intelligence should be right up there with diet and exercise. Some of the latest research has found that avoiding emotional extremes and learning healthy ways to express feelings can make a dramatic difference to cardiac health.

Specifically, recent studies show that learning to cope with two of the most potentially damaging emotions--depression and anger--reduces not only the physical damage stress wreaks on the heart, but can also extend your life span. Furthermore, Ohio State researchers found that depressed men are more likely to suffer fatal heart attacks than are depressed women. The 10-year study, published in last May's Archives of Internal Medicine, fbllowed 876 women and 279 men who were diagnosed with clinical depression but showed no signs of cardiac problems. During that decade, 16 percent of these women died from heart disease, compared with 46 percent of the men. Researchers speculate that the higher fatality rates for the men may be due to the male tendency to keep feelings bottled up rather than expressing them.

The way people regard their surroundings can also be a significant source of stress, according to another Ohio State study published in the April issue of Life Sciences. In this study, 33 women and 31 men filled out questionnaires gauging how they perceived their relationship with others and how they handled anger. Men, researchers learned, viewed the world with a more hostile and adversarial attitude. "People with this personality trait see the world as almost a dangerous place to live; they're more cynical and they tend to question a great deal," says Catherine Stoney, Ph.D., an Ohio State psychology professor. Such characteristics can have serious consequences. Samples showed that the blood levels of heart-damaging homocysteine of men in the study were 30 percent higher than the women's. Although scientists are still unsure why people prone to negative emotions have higher blood levels, homocysteine has been proven to damage the protective layer of cells inside artery walls. (See "The Heart of the Matter," below.)

The lesson from this research, Stoney says, is that the heart suffers less stress if we express unpleasant emotions with discrimination rather than explode in rage or bury feelings. People who can control how and when they get steamed aren't slaves to their tempers, she notes. "You have to be able to look at a situation and decide when it's appropriate to express anger and when it's better to keep it inside."

The ability to avoid an emotional roller coaster is also essential for heart health, says James Blumenthal, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Duke University Medical Center. People whose emotions frequently fluctuate--from calm to irritated to angry--are four times more at risk for ischemia, an often symptomless condition that reduces blood flow to the heart, according to a 1999 Duke study. "We can't completely avoid negative emotions, but it is possible to have better control over how we respond to them," Blumenthal explains. Emotional stability, he says, can be an acquired trait; exercise, biofeedback, stress management and relaxation techniques all help balance potentially dangerous highs and lows.

We do have an instinctual stress-reduction mechanism. "One of the healthiest things you can do for the heart is cry," says Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., a cardiologist in Manchester, Conn., and author of Heartbreak and Heart Disease (Keats Publishing, 1996). "When it comes to emotions," Sinatra says, "the best thing for the heart is to go with your intuition."