It has always been said that stress kills, but rarely has one read about the scientific reasons. A group of researchers from the University of Galway (Ireland) analyzed the stress levels of more than 26,000 people on four continents.
The result: increased stress is associated with increased risk of ischemic stroke and hemorrhagic stroke.
Therefore, yes: stress kills.
a stroke, also known as Cerebrovascular Accident (CVA), is the loss of blood flow to a part of the brain, which damages the brain tissue. Can be ischemic, if it is due to a clot, or hemorrhagic, if it is a loss of blood in the brain tissue.
The feeling of physical or emotional tension, called stress, It is part of people’s daily lives. Occurs at home, at work, on the street or anywhere else where concerns may arise: where there is conflict, stress arises.
Results of research on stress
Researchers from the University of Galway studied the levels of people in Europe, Asia, North and South America, the Middle East and Africa, publishing the results in the academic journal JAMA.
According to them, any life event considered stressful increased the risk of stroke by 17%. Meanwhile, if there were two or more of these types of events, the risk rose to 31%.
The risk decreased while the person was in greater control of the situation.
Something else to note: although the association between stress and stroke risk was observed in almost all world regions studied, except one: Africa. The highest rate corresponds to Southeast Asia (Philippines and Thailand, among them), while the lowest is in China.
Data for South America and Europe are not available.
The study, with the title Association of psychosocial stress with risk of acute stroke, it was fronted by Catriona Reddin, joined by Robert Murphy, Graeme Hankey and others.
