"Broken Hearts" in Women After a Shock

I wanted to cite this article because of the implications in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). In TCM, the heart is the home of the spirit or Shen. So in treating disturbances of the Shen, the practitioner will treat the heart through the heart meridian and through the pericardium meridian. Interestingly, both of these meridians have been found to have a direct effect on the vagus nerve and the autonomic nervous system. So in this article when it explains how a "shock" can affect the heart through adrenaline etc..., TCM has had a way to treat that for millenia.
I've discussed these sort of overlaps before in this blog, here, for example. Of course, data on acupuncture and the autonomic nervous system can be found here, here, and here to name a few. I'd have to think about this further from a TCM standpoint why women would be more susceptible. The fact that women over 55 are more susceptible would suggest a yin/yang issue, but that's speculative...

'Broken heart syndrome' hits women harder

Marilynn Marchione, Associated Press

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Orlando --

A woman's heart breaks more easily than a man's.

Women are seven to nine times more likely to suffer "broken heart syndrome," when sudden or prolonged stress such as an emotional breakup or death causes overwhelming heart failure or heart attack-like symptoms, the first nationwide study of this finds. Patients usually recover with no lasting damage.

Japanese doctors first recognized this syndrome around 1990 and named it Takotsubo cardiomyopathy - tako tsubo are octopus traps that resemble the shape of the stricken heart.

It happens when a big shock triggers a rush of adrenaline and other stress hormones that cause the heart's main chamber to balloon suddenly. Tests show dramatic changes in rhythm and blood substances typical of a heart attack, but no artery blockages that typically cause one. ..

"I was very curious why only women were having this," said Dr. Abhishek Deshmukh of the University of Arkansas, who did the first large study of the problem and reported results Wednesday at an American Heart Association conference in Florida.

Using a federal database with 1,000 hospitals, Deshmukh found 6,229 cases in 2007. Only 671 involved men. After adjusting for high blood pressure, smoking and other factors that can affect heart problems, women were 7.5 times more likely to suffer the syndrome than men.

It was three times more common in women over 55 than in younger women.

Info on my practice here.

Telomeres and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factore

Dusted off this oldie also. By the same group looking at cardiovascular health and telomeres and stress. (This post is an offshoot of this earlier post.)
*1: *Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2006 Apr;31(3):277-87. Epub 2005 Nov
17.

Cell aging in relation to stress arousal and cardiovascular
disease risk factors.


UCSF Department of Psychiatry, San Francisco, CA, USA.
epele@healthpsych.ucsf.edu

We previously reported that psychological stress is linked to and
possibly accelerates cellular aging, as reflected by lower PBMC
telomerase and shortened telomeres. Psychological stress is a major
risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), with multiple
behavioral and physiological mediators. Telomere shortness has been
associated with CVD, but the relationship between low telomerase
activity, a potential precursor to telomere shortening, and CVD risk
factors has not been examined in humans. Here we examine whether
telomere length and telomerase in leukocytes are associated with
physiological signs of stress arousal and CVD risk factors in 62
healthy women. Low telomerase activity in leukocytes was associated
with exaggerated autonomic reactivity to acute mental stress and
elevated nocturnal epinephrine. Further, low telomerase activity was
associated with the major risk factors for CVD -smoking, poor lipid
profile, high systolic blood pressure, high fasting glucose, greater
abdominal adiposity-as well as to a composite Metabolic Syndrome
variable. Telomere length was related only to elevated stress
hormones (catecholamines and cortisol). Thus, we propose that low
leukocyte telomerase constitutes an early marker of CVD risk,
possibly preceding shortened telomeres, that results in part from
chronic stress arousal. Possible cellular mechanisms by which low
telomerase may link stress and traditional risk factors to CVD are
discussed. These findings may implicate telomerase as a novel and
important mediator of the effects of psychological stress on
physical health and disease.