Feeling wronged... and feeling chest pain
How strongly do you agree with this statement: "I often have the feeling that I am being treated unfairly." Apparently, your answer is an indicator of your likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease. Read the article, then decide why you think there is a link of perceived discrimination and heart attacks or angina.
7 comments:
Silvestre
3714
This article deals with how psychology has a correlation with the chance of there being a heart attack. More specifically, the article points that how people with the attitude of "I often have the feeling that I am being treated unfairly." will most likely have habits of drinking, smoking, and overeating. Subsequently, it is due to the aforementioned habits that lead to people to have greater chance of having a heart attack. By having a bad attitude and responding by bad habits the patient will more likely have a higher chance of having a heart attack.
This article helps the reader idenitfy how if they change their attitude it can help them lead a better life which in turn can help them have a healthier lifestyle. This article is a method to help patients, doctors, and society how to predict the chance of there being a heart attack.
I found this other article which can help with predict the chance of a person having a heart attack.
http://www.mercola.com/2005/nov/22/how_to_accurately_predict_your_heart_attack_risk.htm
I think ill give it a second thought the next time my friend has a chess pain. Never did i consider that it could possibly be the result of social conflict. Like the article states, someones who is "feeling wronged" is still responsible for their body. Meaning that yes, the heart is sensitive but still victim to drugs, alcohol, and stress. It is then easy to see a correlation between ones social status and health. It takes a certain effort on an individuals part to change their lifestyle for better health but what is the purpose if they will still remain in a social class that will keep them in ill health. There is no real new information from this article other than a possible correlation. I don't believe that in the future doctors will be able to analyze an individual solely based on one question. With that said now we can truly know just how delicate are hearts are.
Eduardo 9416
Heres an interesting link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11023208
Amira 7670
This was a very interesting article. It is unusual for people to think that sensitivity to feeling discriminated against, mistreated, etc. can lead to actual medical problems in the heart. I guess now, when the statement "you broke my heart" can actually have a literal meaning.
However, I am not surprised at the fact that such a consequence occurs. I also wouldn't be surprised if such negative feelings actually affected other parts of the human body as well. I also remember a saying that states, when one part of the body aches, the entire body aches.
One thing though, that I was unsure about is the fact that Nancy Kreiger mentioned that such heart failures are linked to the fact that people react to mistreatment. They take this reaction out on themselves by eating unhealthy, smoking, and drinking, etc. Thus, it made me wonder that such mistreatments may lead them to take negative action on their own bodies, thus physically effecting them. In a way, this could mean that such mistreatments can indirectly lead to heart diseases. However, it is important to point out that this may not be a direct cause of such heart failures.
This link I found relates to the issue discussed in the previous articel -
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070515074832.htm
The study claims that people who feel they have been treated unfairly are more likely to die from coronary problems. However, I find this study extremely far fetched because these people researched obviously had problems and were more likely to smoke, drink, or overeat and this is probably the number one reason why they died earlier or because of heart problems. It is well known that this kind of harmful lifestyle will shorten your life and or cause heart problems. It entirely depends on how you deal with problems of discrimination and by altering your lifestyle drastically it must be detrimental to your health.
Here is also an article on Stress and Heart Disease, which somewhat relates to this one:
http://www.stress.org/topic-heart.htm?AIS=70c949ec2b6e34d8d3f8d97fcf292d64
Loren 3875
Bryan, 4270
The thought of "[...]being treated unfairly" is associated with "drinking, smoking or overeating." Call me a pessimist, but I do not see the significane of this finding. What makes it so different from my doctor just asking me if I feel alot of pressure or stress in my life. I'd prefer my doctor just ask me straight out if i smoke, drink or overeat. Once my doctor identifies these unfavorable activities then we could talk about what brings me to them and how we could improve my lifestlye. I think working fromt he problem outwards works more efficiently than working from the outwards in because you end up coming up with assumptions and things that just do not make sense. The best thing most people can do is just stick to a healthier lifestlye. The American Heart Association has this great page telling you what you can do to prevent that ticker of yours from going bad early on.
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=1200009
Davidson
8776
I think this article is very interesting not only because it integrates real life with bodily consequences but because it integrates psychology into biology. It is important, however to realize that discrimination does not cause agina. This is a mistake that many people make. They think that just because studies show certain tendencies it does not mean that they are direct causes (correlation vs. causation). This article teaches us not to take discrimination in harming ourselves. Just because we feel hurt, we should not take it out on our own bodies.
Here's a site with the basics of the heart and heart diseases:
http://www.medicinenet.com/heart_attack_and_atherosclerosis_prevention/article.htm
I think that this study is just great. There are too many whiny people in this world anyways. It is however very interesting how the psychology of attitude can actually cause them to have a more likely chance of developing coronary diseases. I think if we get rid of these bad habits of having attitude problems that we should have a better life, but i never would have suspected that it is also physiological. So at least now i know that my good attitude is promoting a healthy lifestyle. Good stuff.
http://www.uihealthcare.com/topics/stressandcope/stre5136.html
Stephen 2068
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