How your emotions change the shape of your heart | Sandeep Jauhar

His

heart

disease continues to progress. Diet and exercise were not sufficient to facilitate remission of coronary

heart

disease. One- and five-year follow-up showed that stress management was more strongly associated with a reduction in coronary heart disease than exercise. To be sure, this study and others like it are small, and of course correlation does not indicate cause. Without a doubt, stress can lead to unhealthy habits, which is the real reason for the increased risk of cardiovascular disease. But as with the link between smoking and lung cancer, when many studies show the same result and when there are mechanisms that explain a causal relationship, it would be strange to deny the possibility that it exists.

What many doctors have concluded is what I, too, have come to understand over nearly two decades of my life as a heart specialist: the emotional heart intersects with its physical counterpart in surprising and mysterious ways. Despite this, current medicine continues to imagine the heart as a machine. This perception had great benefits. Cardiology, my specialty, is undoubtedly one of the scientific fields that has seen the greatest number of success stories in the last 100 years. Cardiac stents, pacemakers, defibrillators, coronary artery bypass surgery and heart transplants... all of them were developed or invented after World War II. However, we may be close to the limit that medicine can scientifically reach to combat heart disease.

In fact, the rate of reduction in mortality from cardiovascular diseases has decreased significantly over the last decade. We will have to move toward a new paradigm to continue making the kind of progress we have become accustomed to. In this model, it will be necessary to present psychological and social factors and focus on how to think about mental problems. This will be an uphill battle and will remain a largely unexplored area. The American Heart Association does not yet include emotional stress as a major modifiable risk factor for heart disease, probably in part because it is easier to lower blood cholesterol than to experience an emotional and social breakdown.

Maybe there is a better way if we recognize that when we say “heartbroken” sometimes we are actually talking about a real broken heart. We must pay more attention to the power and importance of

emotions

in how we care for our heart health. I have learned that emotional stress is more a matter of life than death. thank you so much. (Applause)