The Subtle Ways Chronic Stress Affects Your Heart, According to a Rheumatologist
For years, doctors have been asking the same question at every annual physical: How are your stress levels? They suggest meditation, journaling, and maybe logging off a little earlier at night. Most of us nod along because, yes, we know stress is bad. Then we walk out of the office and straight back into 5:30 a.m. alarms to squeeze in a workout, inboxes that refill faster than we can clear them, back-to-back meetings, school pickups, dentist appointments, and whatever fresh chaos the next day brings. Most of the time, stress feels less like a choice and more like the background noise of being a functioning adult.
The problem is that living in that constant hum of pressure isn't harmless. Over time, chronic stress has been linked to gastrointestinal disorders like IBD and ulcers, autoimmune conditions, depression and anxiety, and even cardiovascular disease. What feels like “just a busy season” can quietly keep your body stuck in overdrive.
So if you’ve been waiting for a sign to actually take the morning walk, put your phone down before bed, or try the breathing exercise your doctor keeps recommending, this might be it.
“Stress, like pain, is designed in the short term to be beneficial (to not put your hand in the fire a second time),” says Andrew J. Holman, the founding rheumatologist at Pacific Rheumatology Associates Inc. “Stress, or the sympathetic half of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), is the gas that drives the fight-or-flight response.”
Related: These 5 Overlooked Symptoms Can Signal a Heart Attack, a Cardiologist Warns
Stress can show up almost anywhere in the body, but Holman says its effects are especially clear in the heart. You may not be able to feel your cardiovascular system revving internally, but it often shows up as higher blood pressure, an elevated pulse, and increased cardiac output. In other words, your body is idling high even when you’re just sitting at your desk.
Clinicians, Holman explains, “often address every risk factor for cardiovascular health available and try to block the adverse impact of diet, obesity, hypertension, high cholesterol, smoking,” but stress doesn’t always get the same attention.
"We direct interventions to every element leading to CAD (coronary artery disease) except possibly the inciting event proposed recently for stroke and heart attack—the sympathetic burst (epinephrine/adrenaline).
Everyone is genetically programmed to run at a certain baseline speed from an ANS (autonomic nervous system) perspective, he adds. Life can press the gas pedal through chronic stress or ease off through mindfulness, fitness, and other wellness practices. The hope moving forward is to measure individual ANS states with more clinical precision and reduce stress biology before it causes damage, so we’re not constantly living like we’re still running from a bear.
Related: Andrew Huberman Reveals 1 Trick to Quickly Relieve Stress—and It’s Used by Dogs