How stress can harm a woman's heart
by CLARE KITCHEN, Daily Mail
Women under pressure can lose oestrogen, the female hormone that helps combat the hardened arteries which can cause heart attacks and strokes.
Men are five times as likely as pre-menopausal women to develop heart disease, Britain's number one killer.
But women are beginning to catch up through bad diet, long working hours, too much alcohol and increasing stress.
Experiments on female monkeys, which closely resemble humans in behavioural and reproductive characteristics, found that stress in the years before menopause led to hardened arteries.
The research, carried out by American scientists, found being under mental pressure could eat into oestrogen levels.
'Observations of female monkeys show that stress during the years before menopause can lead to the early development of hardened arteries,' said Jay Kaplan, a professor of comparative medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Centre in North Carolina.
'Applied to women, this suggests that having an oestrogen deficiency in the premenopausal years predicts higher rate of heart disease after menopause.'
Dr Kaplan said women had traditionally been considered 'immune' from the risks of heart disease until after menopause, when their oestrogen levels dramatically dropped.
'This research demonstrates that stress can contribute to blood vessel disease, a longstanding hypothesis previously supported by little direct evidence,' he said.
In the study, female monkeys were placed in groups where they developed a natural pecking order, from dominant to subordinate.
The subordinate monkeys showed signs of stress and produced less oestrogen. Their arteries were four times harder than the dominant monkeys, whose oestrogen levels hadn't dropped.
A subsequent dose of oestrogen reduced cases of hardened arteries by half.
In women, stress, slimming diseases such as anorexia nervosa and hormone imbalances can reduce oestrogen levels to the point at which
periods can stop. But even moderate drops in oestrogen can cause major health problems.
'We know from monkey studies that stress can lower oestrogen levels to the point that health is affected, even though the animals still have menstrual periods,' said Dr Kaplan.
Career women have already been warned they are risking their health by drinking too much and eating badly.
A survey of eating habits last year showed many were deluding themselves into thinking they ate healthily.
Although they had cut down on fat in their diet in favour of more vitamins and fibre, they were cancelling out the health benefits by indulging in sugary comfort foods.
They also enjoyed too much wine with their meals.
The findings, compiled by nutritionists for the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, led to warnings that women were making themselves more vulnerable to heart disease and breast cancer.
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