When you experience depression, anxiety or stress your heart rate and blood pressure rise, there’s reduced blood flow to the heart and your body produces higher levels of cortisol, stress hormone. Therefore, less blood transported to the heart, means different sound heart makes.
When doing my research on Heart auscultation and percussion I started wondering how and if depression is connected to heart diseases. A percentage of people with no history of depression become depressed after a heart attack or after developing heart failure. And people with depression but no previously detected heart disease, seem to develop heart disease at a higher rate than the general population. A heart attack can impact much more than a person’s heart. It can affect many other aspects of a person’s life, including:
- Attitude and mood
- Sense of certainty about the future
- Confidence about one’s ability to fulfill the roles of a productive employee, mother, father, daughter, or son
- Feelings of guilt about previous habits that might have increased the person’s heart attack risk
- Embarrassment and self-doubt over diminished physical capabilities
“What we can say with certainty is that depression and heart disease often occur together,” says Dr. Roy Ziegelstein, vice dean for education at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine . “About one in five who have a heart attack are found to have depression soon after the heart attack. And it’s at least as prevalent in people who suffer heart failure.” People with depression or who are recovering from a heart attack have a lower chance of recovery and a higher risk of death than people without depression. The reasons range from how the individual behaves to how the body reacts:
- In depressed heart attack patients, decreased motivation to follow healthy daily routines can result in skipping important heart medications, avoiding exercise and proper diet, and continuing or intensifying smoking and drinking habits.
- Individuals with depression can also experience changes in their nervous system and hormonal balance, which can make it more likely for a heart rhythm disturbance (called an “arrhythmia”) to occur. The combination of depression and a damaged heart (from a heart attack), seems to make people particularly susceptible to potentially fatal heart rhythm abnormalities.
- People with depression may have uncommonly sticky platelets, the tiny cells that cause blood to clot. In patients with heart disease, this can accelerate atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and increase the chance of heart attack. Some studies show that treating depression make platelets less sticky again.