Is stress a risk factor for cardiovascular disease?

Hi, I'm Dr Sukhneja and I'm an interventional cardiologist working in central London and much of my work involves managing those patients who have heart disease and heart disease is caused by a number of different factors. One of the most common factors is having high blood pressure, having high cholesterol and being a smoker or having a strong family history. One common question we get asked is, is stress a factor? and I'm absolutely convinced that stress can be a contributing factor for developing heart disease and for a long time we've sought to understand this and there has been some recent studies that's been published in eminent journals that have shown work-related stress is certainly a factor in causing heart disease and heart attacks. Stress can have a major impact on the heart because it causes blood pressure to be elevated, it can cause a dysregulation of our blood sugar that means our blood sugars may be very high and it can alter our stress hormone chemistry inside our body such that we're not processing cholesterol and fats in the normal way and this can cause a build-up of plaque within our heart arteries. Acute stress or sustained stress can also manifest itself as a heart attack. Patients have often told us just moments before they've had their heart attack that they have been perhaps in an argument or a stressful work-related situation. We've even seen patients having heart attacks during the stress of a football match, a premiership football match or even rugby matches and so I'm fairly convinced that stress is a major contributing factor for developing heart artery disease.