If You Won’t Do it For Your Overall Happiness, What About For Your Heart?

Often, when we talk about anxiety, we’re talking about it solely as a mental health issue. And, in most ways, it is. We can talk about the effects of neurotransmitters, or how sedentary lifestyles can create anxiety, or the physical symptoms, but at its core it is still a mental health condition that requires a mental health treatment.

The problem is that for many people that isn’t enough. Anxiety – probably more so than depression and other mental health conditions – can feel at times like it is manageable. Many, many people with anxiety still experience relatively normal lives, and while severe cases of debilitating anxiety are also common, there are many that find anxiety something they can manage and, in some cases, ignore.

You don’t have to live with anxiety.

That’s the first and most important thing to understand. Anxiety may be manageable, but it also touches everything you do, and that’s stressful. That’s upsetting. Why should you let yourself be anxious if you don’t have to be? Why suffer?

But if you need extra motivation to get help, think about your body – especially your heart.

Anxiety and Heart Health

Now, to ease your mind, unless you already have heart related challenges, you do not need to worry that anxiety is suddenly going to cause any type of major heart-related event. In addition, anxiety is unlikely to cause any heart issues in the short or near term. It takes years, potentially decades, for anxiety to have a significant effect.

But it can have an effect, especially if it continues untreated.

During any period of anxiety, a person’s stress response is triggered. This stress response causes an increased heart rate, a rise in blood pressure, changes in your heart rhythms, and inflammation.

All of those put unnecessary stress on your heart. But they’re manageable. The problem is that issues may occur when you allow those issues to affect you in the long term. The longer you allow yourself to experience stress and the hormone cortisol, the more you put yourself at risk for issues such as:

  • Hypertension – The more you experience high blood pressure from stress, the more your body chemistry changes to continue to experience high blood pressure.
  • Heart Disease – Prolonged stress can cause inflammation and straight around the heart, which may lead to plaque buildup and other issues.
  • Heart Attack – Stress can exacerbate other issues around the heart. If you start to develop heart issues associated with aging, the stress of anxiety can increase the risks of heart attack.

Stress is also believed to be able to weaken the heart muscle, which could also lead to heart related issues in the future.

Will Stress Cause Heart Problems?

To say that anxiety “will” cause heart problems is an overstatement. Heart issues have many factors, and the process for anxiety to affect the heart would likely take many, many years, possibly decades. But it’s a new year. As you think about whether or not to treat your anxiety, you should also be thinking about how your anxiety is standing in the way of ALL your goals, including your long term health.

If you’re in need of a therapist to help you with anxiety, and you’re ready to finally commit to change, reach out to me today. I have an in person office in Chandler, AZ, and am available remotely throughout Arizona and California.

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