April 28, 2014

Is Mental Stress Harder On Women’s Hearts?

Is Mental Stress Harder On Women’s Hearts?

Is mental stress harder on women’s hearts?

Searching for the reasons behind these disparities, Charity L. Sauder, Alison E. Thompson, Terrell Myers, and Chester A. Ray, all of Penn State College of Medicine, investigated the effects of mental stress on blood flow through the heart. Their findings show that coronary blood flow actually increases in men during mental stress, but shows no change in women. These results may explain why women could be more susceptible to adverse cardiac events when under stress.

Fat metabolism in animals may be able to be altered to prevent most common type of heart disease.

Working with mice and rabbits, Johns Hopkins scientists have found a way to block abnormal cholesterol production, transport and breakdown, successfully preventing the development of atherosclerosis, the main cause of heart attacks and strokes and the number-one cause of death among humans. The condition develops when fat builds inside blood vessels over time and renders them stiff, narrowed and hardened, greatly reducing their ability to feed oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle and the brain.

Do men’s and women’s hearts burn fuel differently?

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine will study gender differences in how the heart uses and stores fat — its main energy source — and how changes in fat metabolism play a role in heart disease and are different in men and women.  It appears that The changes occur long before any symptoms and may be key to early diagnosis and treatment.

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