People who suffer from chronic anxiety exhibit high levels of norepinephrine, a hormone-neurotransmitter that plays a fundamental role in the stress response and that produced for prolonged periods can affect a person’s cardiac health and functioning.
All of this comes from the University of Iowa study and is available at the Journal of Neuropsychologywhich observed the response of two groups of participants (one group suffered from chronic anxiety and the second had no diagnosed anxiety) who lived a stressful experience in the laboratory.
To measure the response to physiological stress, each participant was placed in a bathtub with cold water for two minutes and, while resisting the cold, they were asked to solve a series of simple mathematical problems for four minutes (this allowed them to evaluate psychological stress). ). To assess anxiety, all subjects were told that they had a two-minute period to prepare for the bathtub with cold water. The physiological response was measured through small microelectrodes placed on the sympathetic nerves and blood pressure and blood flow were also monitored.
As expected, people with chronic anxiety had higher levels of norepinephrine and had a higher response from the sympathetic nerves compared to subjects in the control group.
This significant increase in norepinephrine and sympathetic tissue activity could make people with anxiety more likely to suffer from cardiovascular diseases.
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Original study source:Holwerda, SW, Luehrs, RE, Gremaud, AL, Wooldridge, NA, Stroud, AK, Fiedorowicz, JG, et al. (2018). Relative burst amplitude of muscle sympathetic nerve activity is an indicator of altered sympathetic outflow in chronic anxiety. Journal of Neurophysiology, 17(1), I43.
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