Home and work put women’s hearts at risk

Those who love boxing know this well. There is nothing more powerful, when the opponent lowers his guard, than a right hook directed to the face followed by a blow that comes from the left to KO the opponent. Something similar, even if only on the front of the invisible reactions linked to emotional tension, could also happen to the female heart. Subjected to a double attack by the psychosocial stress, which does not allow you to be calm when the situation at home and in the family becomes complex, and from excessive tensions at work, the body reacts by opening the way to a greater risk for the female heart muscle.

To underline the weight of this association capable of creating a pernicious synergy for the heart and circulation are the results of a research (Studio Drexel) which evaluated the information deriving from a sample of over 80,000 women in the postmenopausal period, involved in the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study (research that controlled the participants in order to identify preventive strategies for oncological, heart and osteoporosis diseases). The investigation, specifically targeted on the action of stress on the heart and vessels, was conducted by researchers from the same university Drexel, coordinated by Yvonne Michael, and have been published on Journal of the American Heart Association. According to what emerges, living “badly” and with tension in one’s profession and having stressful social relationships leads to a 21 percent greater risk of developing a disease affecting the coronary arteries, such as angina pectoris or heart attack. But that’s not enough: the study also found that events that have a high impact on the woman’s emotional reaction, from the death of the partner to separation or physical and social abuse, as well as life in a socially complex environment, can be associated with a increased risk of coronary artery disease. The data were collected in the population under examination through a survey performed directly on the women involved and with the analysis of information on the state of health. During the observation period, which lasted for just under fifteen years, just under one in twenty women showed signs of coronary artery disease.

In this specific cohort, experts showed that highly stressful life events were associated with a 12 percent increase in the risk of coronary heart disease and high social tension was associated with a 9 percent increase in coronary heart disease risk for global growth, combining the two, by more than 20 percent. It must be said that these data appear to be explicitly related to emotional tension, given that the extent of the effort at work, alone, was not independently associated with coronary artery disease. The association between professional stress, linked above all to the need to respond to high expectations for women, and skyrocketing emotional tension at home for events that set in motion a chronic stress response, appears particularly significant in this historical period. The pandemic from Covid-19in fact, it can function as an extra fuel in this dynamic, exacerbating the need for women to respond to their professional vocation and role in the family. “The pandemic has highlighted the continuing pressures for women to balance paid work and social stressors – is the comment of the Michael. We know from other studies that work stress may play a role in the development of cardiovascular disease, but we can now better identify the combined impact of stress at work and at home on these negative health outcomes. ” The goal, according to the expert, is that from this analysis the need to monitor the stress in the workplace more and more carefully, remembering that women have a double burden to bear, also considering their activity in the workplace. family.