MOSCOW, 24 Jan. American medical scientists have concluded that men who worry more develop heart disease and diabetes earlier. The results of the study are published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. To track the relationship between anxiety and risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes, the authors analyzed data from participants in a longitudinal study of male aging. The Normative Aging Study, initiated in 1961 by the US Veterans Outpatient Clinic in Boston. The analysis included 1,561 men with a mean age of 53 in 1975. At the time of entry into the database, they had no cardiovascular disease or cancer and were all tested for neuroticism. Neuroticism is a personality trait characterized by a tendency to interpret situations as threatening, stressful, or overwhelming. People with high levels of neuroticism tend to experience negative emotions more often, such as fear, anxiety, sadness, and anger.» Our findings suggest that higher levels of anxiety among men are associated with biological processes that can lead to heart disease and metabolic disorders. And this the connection could have occurred much earlier than is commonly believed, potentially as early as childhood or adolescence, ”lead study author Lewina Lee, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine and clinical psychologist at Boston University, said in a press release from the American Heart Association. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Center.Unexpected Benefits of Fats in Diabetes Discovered» Anxiety is related to our attempts to solve a problem whose outcome is unclear — it can be positive or negative. Anxiety can be adaptive, for example, when it leads us to constructive solutions, or unhealthy, especially when it becomes uncontrollable and interferes with our daily activities,” explains the scientist. Study participants underwent a physical examination and blood tests every three to five years. Among the parameters of health assessment, the authors selected seven cardiometabolic risk factors: upper and lower blood pressure, total cholesterol, triglycerides, body mass index, fasting blood sugar, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, and an inflammatory marker. Each participant was assigned a score — one for each of the seven risk factors. If a person had six or more high-risk markers, scientists considered that they had already developed a cardiometabolic disease. The researchers found that during the period of life from 33 to 65 years, the average number of high-risk cardiometabolic factors increases by about one per decade and by age 65 reaches an average of 3.8. However, across all age groups, participants with higher levels of neuroticism had higher scores. After adjusting for demographic characteristics such as income and education, and a family history of heart disease, scientists estimate that they are 13 percent more likely to develop cardiometabolic disease than people with low anxiety.
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