Head Attack

Mind over Matter”, a phrase often used to encourage one another to overcome a physical obstacle that can be subdued by mental strength. However, “Mind over Matter” is not all positivity and accomplishments, it has its negative affects as well.. For Example, ulcers high blood pressure and asthma are all believed to be direct results of stress. Another question that has been recently researched is whether or not heart attacks are cause by stress. Around 1.5 million people suffer from a heart attack each year, 200,000 of them die, and many of them are believed to be brought on by stress. A recent study shows that out of 224 patients who had suffered heart attacks, more than half had experienced stress within twenty-four hours prior to the heart attack. About a quarter of all suspected heart attack victims reported to hospitals are not even suffering a heart attack, and no possible cause for their heart attack-like symptoms can be found. This phenomenon is yet to be explained, but is suspected to be a direct effect of emotional stress.
Stress resulting in a heart attack is caused by the body’s misinterpretation for stress as a dangerous situation. When the brain recognizes a dangerous situation occurring it immediately prepares the rest of the body for “fight or flight”. In the process of preparing for “fight or flight” the body experiences several changes. First, stress hormones such as epinephrine, norepinephrine, and glucocorticoids are released into the bloodstream. Next, unnecessary processes such as your digestive tract are shut down in order to preserve energy for leg muscles. In order for enough oxygen to be supplied to the legs, the heart rate increases rapidly, circulatory veins constrict to drive blood back to the heart more quickly. The blood that is driven back to the heart slams into the heart walls which snap back with even greater force. At the same time, arteries relax to increase blood flow from the heart to the needy muscles.
Unfortunately the body often undergoes the same reaction when faced with stressors such as depression, aggression, competitiveness, anxiety, ambition, or impatience. These stresses can cause high blood pressure, which leads to a fierce cycle of physical changes that ultimately lead to arrhythmia or a heart attack. Heart attacks can also be triggered by traumatic emotional stresses such as death of a loved one, an emotionally intense fight, a natural disaster, or heavy deadlines. Men that anticipate the worst and/or explode with anger make them thirty percent more likely to develop arrhythmia. Also a intense emotion such as anger or fury doubles the risk of a heart attack during the next few hours.

My Response:
The effect the mind has on the heart, although harmful, can be used in positive ways as well. After recent experiments on pigs, scientists find that the frontal brain appears to be connected to the nerve cell bodies of the sympathetic nervous system in the spinal cord in such a way that the mind should be capable of having a positive influence on the heart. Thorough relaxation techniques and stress management methods that are based on this theory, heart patients may be able to increase their survival chances more than they would with daily exercise. Two major steps to decreasing the risk heart attack other than relieving stresses are exercising daily and developing healthy eating habits.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=head-attack