Mimi Guarneri, MD, FACC
Scripps Integrative Medicine
Excerpted from The New Medicine Interviews

For a long time, we’ve known the mind and the body are connected. It’s just… medicine has always focused on what is the quick drug that we can give to deal with people, and the whole concept of the mind/body connection is much more complex than, “Here’s a medication.”

And so, in Western medicine, particularly in cardiology, physicians sort of put it by the wayside. When you look at cardiology, it’s absolutely mind-boggling the amount of research and literature [that exists about the mind-body]. I mean, the American College of Cardiology put out bulletins within the last couple of months saying, stress is bad for the heart; hostility affects the heart.

So, when you look at all of the things that we know go into risk factors for heart disease – things like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and inflammation... These are simple things. We talk about them all the time in cardiology – arrhythmia, skipped heartbeats, extra heartbeats... These are all made worse by the stress hormones.

When we are under a lot of stress, we now know that the body is capable of producing 12-plus hormones that were really designed to help us in a stressful situation. So these were the hormones that are there to protect us if the house is burning; if we get hit with a car. We need to produce sugar, so we can run. Our vessels need to constrict, so that we don’t bleed to death in an emergency situation.

What happens when we’re bombarded all day long with stressful events or events that we perceive as stressful? Because you have to remember, stress is how I perceive it. We can put two people in the same situation; they’ll perceive it totally differently. One may have hormone rises and changes, and the other may not.

If I perceive [a situation] as stressful, I’m going to produce cortisol, which will raise my blood sugar. I’m going to produce aldosterone, which will raise my blood pressure. I’m going to produce adrenaline, and noradrenaline, which will raise my cholesterol, constrict my arteries, increase my heart rate, cause me to have skipped heartbeats. This is just the tip-of-the-iceberg, basic Stress 101.

And it goes beyond stress. In people that are angry, hostile, or revengeful… when we put heart rate monitors on them, their heart rate variability shows us they’re in a complete sympathetic overload, constantly stimulated. And in that constantly stimulated state, [they have an] increased heart rate, [they are] more prone to constricted arteries, and so on. So we know hostility, day-to-day stress, and depression… [affects the heart]…

Think about this: If someone is depressed, do they say, let me get up and exercise in the morning, and I’ll have brussels sprouts for lunch? It’s more like, let me have that pack of cigarettes, because that’s comfort. Or, I’m going to eat for comfort. I don’t want to come out from under the covers and go exercise… What’s the point in living, so why should I invest in all these other things?

So we now know that all of these pieces are connected. [They are] as important as cholesterol; as important as blood pressure.